Our Sponsors are an important foundation of our online community. Please visit their websites.
Our Associate Sponsors provide valuable support to our community and help build 'The Wall'.
Our partners help move the Wired In agenda forward.
Join our community, create your own profile page, and communicate about what matters to you.
Recent media articles suggesting that methadone is recovery has made me a tad angry, so here goes nothing.
Abstinence is a culmination of a process, where an Individual is constantly moved forward through treatment. Recovery, however, is not just about the individual. It’s about families, communities and the person as a whole. It’s about self worth, self esteem and self belief.
The only way you do this is by building those bridges with the family and the community and that has to start with looking at ones self. There are many routes in to recovery, and to say that recovery is firmly routed in harm reduction or abstinence is very single minded.
If we take a look at the treatment system, surely that is the route in to recovery and if were saying that recovery is firmly sat in harm reduction then why do we need tier 4 or any of the fellowships. Also lets not forget not everyone works a 12 step programme (myself included). To say recovery is this or its that is in my humble opinion the reason people stay sick.
Am with you on this James. I find it hard to conceive of a definition for what is after all a process. So I am sticking with my own definition – Recovery is….getting better.
Hi James – interesting blog.
It’s my personal experience that abstinence can be achieved without any “treatment” whatsoever – as you rightly mention, some of us get better in fellowships or by other means.
And treatment of any kind is only one route into recovery, whether abstinent or not. There are many people in long-term recovery who have never accessed the treatment system, and I get a bit cross when the media assume that all addicts/alcoholics must have “treatment” in order to solve their problem – and that treatment consists of only one thing.
It’s the sort of stuff the NTA trot out out with tedious regularity – as if they represent the many thousands of people who get into recovery – frequently forgetting that most people who opt for treatment have already made the first step in their journey all on their own by recognising they need help and having the courage to ask for it.
What you say about recovery is spot on – and Michaela, too – it’s a complex, sometimes difficult, restructuring of our lives; it can take a long time, and for me – nearly 10 years abstinent – it’s an ongoing process.
It hasn’t been about my drug of choice for a long time; it’s about living a better life, doing the best I can without a chemical crutch, and passing on the things I learn to those who ask – and being open to a continuing education myself!
Thank you.
Andrea
