The Impact of Sharing Recovery Stories in Public: Stigma, Trauma Response, and the Need for Multiple Pathways

Abstract

There is increasing pressure on members of the substance use recovery community to share stories of their recovery process with health care professionals and the public to educate and destigmatize. This study examines the process and impact of this public sharing on recovery community members. This qualitative study used semi-structured, online interviews with 26 members of the recovery community who were recruited through a New England-based recovery community organization and social media. Sharing recovery stories in public is complex as 96% of participants reported both positive and negative experiences in sharing. Participants perceived that sharing could combat stigma through education about multiple recovery pathways and engender external validation. Perceived or anticipated impacts included facing different levels of stigma in and outside of the recovery community as well as potential trauma responses. Public sharing necessitated preparation or training, of which 92% had not received formal training. Recovery community members and organizations understand they have expert knowledge about recovery pathways that they can share to change perceptions of providers and the public. Substance use educators can work with and for the recovery community to provide guidance and resources to prepare for public, outgroup sharing to mitigate stigma and potential trauma response. Future research should consider a more diverse sample and a focus on in-group cultural consensus modeling, listing, and building inventories of “what to do” or “what not to do” when sharing traumatic experiences.

Keywords:

• Recovery
• storytelling
• stigma
• trauma response
• multiple pathways
• substance use
• substance misuse
• substance use disorder
• disclosure

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the members of the recovery community who participated in this study, as well as [NAMES REDACTED FOR BLINDED PEER REVIEW] for their engagement in (Author 1)’s design and conceptualization of the study. This study was approved by the Plymouth State University IRB review board.

Disclosure statement

(Author 3) is an administrator and leader in an RCO that was a gateway for recruiting the participant sample. (Author 3) did not have access to, nor review, any raw or de-identified interview data.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Marguerite Corvini

Marguerite Corvini is director of the UNH Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI). She focuses on building telehealth and digital health educational programming for students and professionals in the field, emphasizing bridging the digital health divide. Dr. Corvini engages in interprofessional work with colleagues at UNH and within the community to make technology more accessible in rural areas through various grant, research, and project opportunities. Dr. Corvini also teaches as an adjunct professor in the Social Work Department. In 2020, Dr. Corvini received a USDA grant to bolster connectivity between rural New Hampshire county jails and recovery centers and reduce the digital divide. Through this, residents were afforded better access to recovery services via telehealth. She has extensive experience in project management, implementation, facilitation, and research. Dr. Corvini is a social worker by training.

Casey Golomski

Casey Golomski is a cultural and medical anthropologist. His research centers perennial questions about life, death, and their thresholds, asking how people work through and memorialize critical events in their lives and communities. Aside from authoring over thirty academic and literary publications, Golomski’s been interviewed for and cited by media outlets such as the New York Times, The Conversation, New Hampshire Public Radio, New Hampshire Magazine, AlexNews, Times of eSwatini, and Business Times. His forthcoming book, ‘God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End’ (Rutgers University Press), brings readers to the end of life to glimpse what lies on other side for a country racked by racial violence. A work of creative nonfiction based on seven years of immersive research, ‘God’s Waiting Room’ takes a daylong tour of a small-town nursing home and features the memoirs of seven astonishing individuals–Black, white, and LGBT older adults of South Africa’s apartheid generation, their Black nurses of the younger born-free generation, and the untold story of Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island prison nurse–to show how people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds. His first book, ‘Funeral Culture: AIDS, Work, and Cultural Change in an African Kingdom’ (Indiana University Press), also based on seven years of immersive research, is the first and only documentary account of the AIDS epidemic in eSwatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy and the country with the world’s highest HIV prevalence for more than 15 years. Through the voices of people in rural and urban communities, churches, and businesses, Funeral Culture documents how grassroots responses to an epidemic drove innovations in everyday care practices that counteract the government’s conservative cultural projects. The book shows how disease epidemics, whether AIDS or COVID-19, become grounds for citizens to engage in political reform through aspirations for work. Funded by three Fulbright Fellowships, the Wenner Gren, Reed, Mellon, and Teagle Foundations, and institutional awards and grants, his research and creative writing has been published in a range of anthropology, social science, Black and African studies, and literary journals and edited volumes. He was also awarded the Society for Humanistic Anthropology First Prize in Poetry. As an invited speaker on his research and approaches to writing, he has given talks at Emory, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin, Boston, Michigan State, Oslo, and the Universities of Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal, Witwatersrand, and Pretoria in South Africa, where he is also an ongoing visiting researcher. 

John Burns

John Burns is a person in long term recovery and a family member with a daughter who has struggled with addiction and recovery. John has his MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. John was on the initial governance council for SOS to help shape the vision before SOS opened Recovery Community Centers in Strafford County. He founded Families Hoping and Coping, a peer based family support group, in Dover in 2014 and they now have 2 chapters in Strafford County and the seacoast that meet weekly including one at SOS Recovery Center in Dover. He has traveled to both Portugal and Montreal to attend International Harm Reduction Conferences and is an advocate for criminal justice reform, harm reduction strategies and promoting inclusivity, diversity and removing barriers for marginalized individuals. John is a 2019 graduate of Leadership Seacoast Class of 2019. He has been appointed by Governor Sununu to serve as a voice of the recovery community on the NH Overdose Death Fatality Review Commission. He has also been appointed by the Chair of the Governors Commission for Alcohol and other Drugs to serve on the Stimulant Taskforce. He has been active member of the Strafford County Addiction Taskforce for several years and the Strafford County Public Health Advisory Council.