Reflective recovery

Marta B. Erdos, Gabor Kelemen, Jozsef Csurke, Joan Borst

In this book we invite the reader to take a few steps into the “multiverse” of 12-step fellowship recovery cultures. These fellowships exist in many different countries to guide and help dependent persons in their personal journey towards recovery. Twelve-step fellowships do not fit into the technological rationalism of service delivery models but represent a different kind of trans-formative framework. In the authors’ conception, recovery is the acquisition of the sober culture. Following the ideas of narrative therapists who assume that it is the clients who can teach us best the realities of their own lives, authors witnessed the learning processes of recovering  persons who identify them-selves as alcoholics or drug-dependent persons. The integrative conception of health learning is based on the systematic exploration of related theories and on the sequential-transformative analysis of the data derived from interviews with 12-step members and other persons in recovery. Theory and research on processes of recovery are supplemented by a comprehensive analysis of drug policies that determine the social context for “active” and recovering addicts and helpers. Our research was conducted in the special environment of the transition society of Hungary. The social environment characterized by the chaos related to our state socialist legacy and the confusion of recent transitions demand in-depth reflection on the part of the communities and the person, creating a uniquely inspiring position for social and cultural research.