We have chosen five articles for this issue that demonstrate the importance of mutual support for recovery from addiction, including the impact of addiction of the family and children of the practicing addict. These articles examine mutual support groups for chronic relapsers or those who are in stable recovery, the impact of peer-mentoring on the mentor, the effect of addiction treatment on families in India, the use of groups to intervene at the earliest stages of addiction for the unborn child, and finally, a study of mutual support for individuals seeking serenity and peace-of-mind because of a family member's addiction.
Kearns and Brown examine the characteristics of three classifications of groups who attend Alcoholics Anonymous: newcomers, chronic relapsers, and endurers. This important contribution to the literature offers an alternative to an undifferentiated perspective on participants who attend AA meetings. The article by Dugdale, Elison, Davies, Ward and Dalton studies the peer mentoring phenomenon and the impact that peer mentoring has on the peer mentor's own recovery maintenance. This cutting edge research operationalizes the principles of mutual support that originated in AA: that an alcoholic keeps sobriety by giving it away.
Lander, Marshalek and Sullivan add to the growing body of literature concerning the treatment of pregnant addicts, integrating medication assisted treatment and group psychotherapy to support recovery from substance use disorders. Their work increases our sensitivity to our task of eliminating the stigma attached to the addicted pregnant woman, which is so often a tragic barrier to seeking treatment.
In the next article Colley offers an important observational study on the importance of the effect of alcoholism treatment and recovery on another group: the family group. This study from a different culture than we usually find in our literature supplements our knowledge base from a perspective of how alcoholism treatment is offered in the State of Kerala, India. Finally, we conclude this issue with a contribution from Sell and Magor-Blatch, which expands the literature on characteristics of participants of Al-Anon family support groups with their focus on the stress-strain-coping support model. Like the article from Colley, this article on Al-Anon, coming as it does from Australia, creates an international context for our work, which might otherwise be marginalized as only regional in its applicability.