"The Recovery Movement"

We Stand On The Shoulders of Giants

While the modern recovery movement can be traced back to that fateful day in 1935 when Bill Wilson met Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio and the two went on to create Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s only within recent years that a dynamic, visible and vocal grassroots recovery advocacy movement has sprung up throughout the nation.

The founding of Alcoholics Anonymous marks the beginning of what has come to be called the Modern Recovery Movement; a movement that has made (and continues to make) recovery from mental health and substance use disorder both attainable and sustainable for millions of individuals and their loved ones.

At its core, the movement champions the idea that individuals with mental health conditions and substance use disorders can heal, actively participate in their own care, and lead meaningful lives in their communities.

Finding Our Voices

Today's recovery movement also developed in reaction to certain aspects of how the clinical system had come to approach the treatment of substance use and mental health disorders [1].

Clinical treatment typically:

Focused on individuals in treatment, rather than the individuals plus their family members and community.
Delivered episodic treatment ending with discharge, without a provision for ongoing support.
Relied on professionals as the decision makers, often excluding the individuals in treatment.
Emphasized fixing people's problems instead of building their strengths.

Other drivers of the recovery movement included the criminalization of addiction and the ongoing stigmatization of people with substance use–related problems.

In response, the 1990s saw new grassroots entities called recovery community organizations (RCOs) spring up around the country to enable people in recovery, and their families and allies, to come together to engage in recovery advocacy and to support each other in their recovery journeys. A national recovery summit convened in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2001 brought together representatives of these organizations and national recovery advocacy organizations, who forged what became a national movement to elevate recovery as a focus of treatment, research, public awareness, and institution building. The summit also saw the launch of a new organization, Faces & Voices of Recovery, to represent the RCOs and people in recovery generally [2].

SAMHSA provided significant support to the developing movement by helping fund RCOs and the 2001 summit. In 2005, SAMHSA convened the National Summit on Recovery to reach consensus on the Definition of "Recovery", The Guiding Principles of Recovery, the 4 Domains of Recovery and elements of recovery-oriented systems of care (ROSCs). The summit had as its overarching goal promoting better integration of recovery into policy, services, and systems of care for people in or seeking recovery.[3]

New institutions—such as Recovery Community Centers (RCCs), recovery cafés, and collegiate recovery programs, described elsewhere in TIP 65, especially Chapter 4—have come out of the recovery movement, as has a new type of service for people in or seeking recovery: Peer Support Services (PSS). The movement has become even more inclusive of families and different cultural approaches, and it focuses on developing systems of care and communities that support recovery.

Reference:

Counseling Approaches To Promote Recovery From Problematic Substance Use and Related Issues [Internet].

Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 65.

Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 2023.

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