Surrender to win

Constructions of 12-step recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction

Bibliographic Data

ID7787738
AuthorsC D Gordon (0000-0002-1464-5470, City, University of London, corresponding author), Carla Willig (0000-0001-9804-9141, City, University of London)
Year2021
Volume25
Issue6
Pages651-668
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHealth An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1363459320912837
PMID32191133
OpenAlexW3004203111
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited21

This article focuses on the ways in which members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous construct themselves as being in recovery from addiction. In this original study, data were taken from 19 participants. They were analysed using Willig’s six-stage Foucauldian discourse analytic method. This method is suited to enabling the analyst to locate discourse resources used by participants within broader, dominant, discourses, and for exploration of the implications of these constructions for subjectivity and practice. This article presents a discussion of analytic findings. Mainstream academia has often constructed 12-Step recovery as a largely totalising discourse. This is likely to have negatively prejudiced health professionals and may help explain relatively low referral rates into 12-Step resources for addicted clients. However, our analysis suggested that participants constructed themselves not as subjected by Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous discourse, but as drawing on it in ways aligned with agency, in order to practice care of the self in pursuit of various ethical goals. This implies 12-Step recovery to be less antithetical to, and indeed more aligned with, humanistic practitioner values than is perhaps often assumed to be the case. This finding suggests that practitioners may need to consider reappraising their view of 12-Step recovery. The discussion will therefore focus on the agency-structure dialectic that seemed to be at the heart of participant constructions of addiction and recovery. It is also a finding which points to an urgent need for more qualitative studies in the currently under-researched, and hence perhaps poorly understood, area of 12-Step recovery from addiction

Addiction · Alcoholics Anonymous · Epistemology · Humanism · Mainstream · Political science · Psychiatry · Qualitative research · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Surrender · Computer Science · Health Policy Implementation Science · Law · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Psychology · Social Psychology · Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes

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