Mapping COVID vulnerability in relation to drug and alcohol recovery residence availability across the United States.

Recovery housing is an important resource for those in recovery from substance use disorders. Unfortunately, we know little about its relationship to key community health risk and protective factors, potentially limiting the role it could play as a broader health resource. Leveraging county-level data on recovery residences from the National Study of Treatment and Addiction Recovery Residences (NSTARR), this study used multilevel modeling to examine Community COVID Vulnerability Index (CCVI) scores as well as availability of COVID testing and vaccination sites in relation to recovery housing.

Social Model Recovery and Recovery Housing.

Recovery housing is an important resource for many in their recovery from alcohol and other drug use disorders. Yet providers of recovery housing face a number of challenges. Many of these challenges are rooted in stigma and bias about recovery housing.

Developing an Experiential Definition of Recovery: Participatory Research With Recovering Substance Abusers From Multiple Pathways.

Background: The What is Recovery? (WIR) study identified specific elements of a recovery definition that people in substance abuse recovery from multiple pathways would endorse.

Objectives: To explain how participatory research contributed to the development of a comprehensive pool of items defining recovery; and to identify the commonality between the specific items endorsed by participants as defining recovery and the abstract components of recovery found in four important broad recovery definitions.

Methods: A four-step, mixed-methods, iterative process was used to develop and pretest items (August 2010 to February 2012).

Mixed methods study of help seekers and self-changers responding to an online recovery survey.

Aims: To compare self-changers (natural recovery) with help seekers on demographics, pre-recovery problem severity, and recovery beliefs and behaviors; and to augment these quantitative findings with information extracted from the qualitative stories of a subset of self-changers to explore themes in recovery paths as informed by a nascent natural recovery literature.

Methods: Quantitative secondary analyses were conducted with persons who had responded to a US nationwide online survey called 'What Is Recovery' (WIR) and who reported a prior lifetime alcohol problem (n = 5495). Six men and six women (with longer-term recoveries) interviewed later were asked to tell their 'recovery story from the beginning up to now'.

Elements that define recovery: the experiential perspective.

Objective: Although recovery increasingly guides substance use disorder services and policy, definitions of recovery continue to lack specificity, thereby hindering measure development and research. The goal of this study was to move the substance use disorders field beyond broad definitions by empirically identifying the domains and specific elements of recovery as experienced by persons in recovery from diverse pathways.

Method: An Internet-based survey was completed by 9,341 individuals (54% female) who self-identified as being in recovery, recovered, in medication-assisted recovery, or as having had a problem with alcohol or drugs (but no longer do).

The impact of AA on non-professional substance abuse recovery programs and sober living houses.

In addition to being a widely used and effective approach for alcohol problems, AA has been central to the development of several types of nonprofessional recovery programs. Known as "social model recovery," these programs were staffed by individuals in recovery and they encouraged program participants to become involved in AA as a way to address their drinking problems. In addition, they relied on the traditions, beliefs, and recovery practices of AA as a guide for managing and operating programs (e.

The twelve-step recovery model of AA: a voluntary mutual help association.

Alcoholism treatment has evolved to mean professionalized, scientifically based rehabilitation. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is not a treatment method; it is far better understood as a Twelve-Step Recovery Program within a voluntary self-help/mutual aid organization of self-defined alcoholics. The Twelve-Step Recovery Model is elaborated in three sections, patterned on the AA logo (a triangle within a circle): The triangle's legs represent recovery, service, and unity; the circle represents the reinforcing effect of the three legs upon each other as well as the "technology" of the sharing circle and the fellowship.

Understanding results from randomized trials: use of program- and client-level data to study medical and nonmedical treatment programs.

Objective: To address unanticipated results from randomized trials, researchers often focus on client-level data about services received during treatment. Program-level observations can also be helpful, especially in understanding treatment delivered in groups. Using both approaches, this article strives to better understand inconsistent results from a trial comparing medical and nonmedical group-format day treatment.