Basic HTML Version
ITWAS UK RECOVERYMONTH IN SEPTEMBER
. Not a
lot of people know that, and those who do probably
have very different views on what it means. There
have been recovery months in the US for years and
until pretty recently they focused primarily on
‘recovery from addiction’ and ‘treatment’.
Early on it was called ‘treatment effectiveness
month’ and there remains a US focus on services
alongside a relatively recent expansion of the
month to encompass mental health and
‘behavioural science’. It’s the US approach,
perhaps a reflection of the difficulties getting
access, particularly if you’re poor, to even the
most basic of services. I’ve seen echoes of this perspective in the UK, tweets
referring to #addictionrecoverymonth, attempts within some social media to
follow the US lead and frame UK Recovery Month as a celebration of the
abstinent and treatment.
Somehow this doesn’t sit right with me. People end up in ‘addiction’
because of a huge variety of issues. Many issues remain, and indeed perhaps
new ones arise, once people stop using particular substances and become
abstinent. Does a primary focus on addiction (framed around cessation of
particular forms of unhealthy consumption) deny major realities in people’s
lives? Surely those that ‘reclaim’ their lives have recovered from much more
than ‘addiction’? Is ‘recovery’ more than ‘treatment effectiveness’ and a
number of years abstinent? If we look at the mental health recovery movement
we find that ‘recovery’ is all about ‘assuming control… becoming empowered…
challenging stigma… instilling hope and optimism’.
This is my kind of recovery, not some medicalised, treatment-led drug-
obsessed distraction from the inequality and poverty, material and spiritual,
that’s strangling us. I’m with Professor Phil Hanlon at Glasgow university. We
need to recover from ‘economism’, reducing people and communities to
economic formulas, commodifying others in ‘payment by results’ matrices.
Recover from ‘materialism and consumerism’, reducing ourselves to units of
economic ‘worth’, buying, watching, consuming, empty. Recover from
‘individualism’, reducing ourselves to dislocated fragmented lonely shadows,
separate, anxious, tapping away at screens. We need to recover from fear and
find some hope; some sense that things can change for the better.
I see hope in the UK recovery movement, young as it is, confused as it is. I
see it in the recovery walks, big and small, that have mushroomed across the
UK since Liverpool in 2009. I see it in the passion and the strengths I encounter
in small community groups scrabbling for existence in shabby service annexes
and church halls. I see hope in harm reductionists coming together to redefine
‘SU activism’ and hesitantly forming links with the ‘purple-clad recovery
brigade’. I see it in service folk and community activists working tirelessly
alongside the marginalised and the excluded. I see hope in the UK Recovery
Month, 102 events this September, bringing all kinds of different people
together, and that’s why I think we need it. We need a month that celebrates
hope, a month that celebrates our similarities as human beings and our
diversity and the belief that we can, all of us, recover.
You can check out the 102 UK Recovery Month events here:
http://www.ukrf.org.uk/index.php/recovery-month/events
Alistair Sinclair is a director of the UK Recovery Federation (UKRF)
October 2014 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 15
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Recovery |
Voices of recovery
VOICES OF RECOVERY
RECOVERING HOPE
Recovery should be about empowerment and
instilling optimism – not about treatment
effectiveness and ‘number of years abstinent’,
says
Alistair Sinclair
September’s event was called ‘My Month – My Recovery’
and events included a recovery photo competition with
an exhibition of works that will travel across the county...