Recovery is emerging as a new organizing construct within the alcohol and drug problems arena. Government policymakers are reframing policy goals beyond those of supply reduction, harm minimization, and demand reduction. Discussions of primary prevention, early intervention, and clinical treatment are being reframed within a larger rubric of personal, family, and community recovery; wellness; and quality of life. Acute and palliative care models of addiction treatment are giving way to models of sustained recovery management nested within larger recovery-oriented systems of care. Clinical assessment and service planning are being revolutionized via the constructs of recovery capital and recovery planning. Multiple pathways of long-term recovery are being mapped within and across an ever-growing network of religious, spiritual, and secular recovery mutual aid societies and a greater understanding of processes of natural recovery. Grassroots recovery community organizations are springing up across the globe in an unprecedented level of cultural and political mobilization of individuals and families in recovery. New service institutions are emerging—recovery homes, recovery schools, recovery industries, recovery ministries, recovery cafes—that do not fit the traditional categories of addiction treatment and recovery mutual aid. Internet-based and other technology-based mutual aid and social networking are challenging traditional mechanisms for delivering both treatment and recovery support. New recovery-focused service roles are rapidly spreading, e.g., recovery support specialists, recovery coaches, peer specialists. And calls for pursuit of a recovery-focused research agenda are challenging the historical addiction pathology preoccupations of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. > > > > Read More
