A Tale of the Spontaneous Emergence of a Recovery Group and the Characteristics That Are Making It Thrive: Exploring the Politics and Knowledge of Recovery

Abstract

This article details the history of an informal recovery-orientated mountaineering group based in North Wales. Although by definition a study rather than a research project, it nonetheless seeks to use the principles of narrative research as a means of evidencing the existence of activity-orientated recovery groups, illustrating their diversity and exploring the issues of knowledge and power that arguably construct and restrict recovery agendas. What will be presented is both a successful and typical mutual aid story (all be it in a more unusual context), springing from accidental beginnings but then progressing through initial bonding and forming to the long-term realization and maintenance of support. It will explore why belief in others, acts of giving and sharing, access to resources, and the taking of risks are fundamental ontological considerations for the recovery movement. Further, a tale of philosophies, knowledge, ownership, power, and recognition of achievement will provide evidence of what in other sectors would be called successful treatment outcomes but in reality actually offer challenges to rethink traditional treatment approaches and embrace a wider recovery-orientated perspective. This exploration of the evolution of a functional and successful participant-owned recovery group will be linked to conceptual models of recovery and change.

KEYWORDS:

• alcohol and drug
• recovery
• community intervention
• social inclusion
• wilderness therapy

Notes

Names are fictitious for anonymity and ease of telling the tale.

This article has not chosen to engage in a detailed discourse on the use of the term „recovery” (e.g., 12 step or not, abstinent or not). We acknowledge for many who walk in the hills for the first time that this discovery of something new (mountain walking) is possibly a more appropriate term than recovery. But we are comfortable enough with a notion of recovery as folks accessing a less damaging and more rewarding life.

Maintenance is both a narrow reference to long-term prescribing programs and the notion of service provision interested in retaining clients within its objectives rather than moving beyond the commissioned treatment context. DARE is open to all and does not hold any membership criteria based on relation to current consumption or not of substance, whether legal, prescribed, illicit, or illegal.

Moel is Welsh for „mountain.” Moel Siabod is a 2,861-foot (872 meters) mountain near the village of Capel Curig in Snowdonia.

Butties is a colloquial term for sandwiches.

Flask, as in Thermos Flask or Vacuum Flask, is a container for transporting hot drinks.