Personal strengths and resources that people use in their recovery from persistent substance use disorder

Abstract

Background

The concept of recovery capital refers to the sum of resources that a person has available to initiate and continue a recovery process. This concept has not been greatly explored with people with persistent substance use disorder (SUD), whose recovery is often quite long.

Method

We conducted 19 qualitative interviews with 19 people (9 men, 10 women) with persistent SUD to understand the personal strengths they use in their recovery. A gender-differentiated thematic analysis of the transcripts was conducted.

Findings

The analysis paints a portrait of people who, despite their difficulties, managed to use their skills and develop new ones to confront their problems: introspection, perseverance, self-belief, knowledge about recovery, etc. For women in particular, the ability to assert themselves appears to have been a survival tool in their trajectory. For most of the participants, material and financial resources were most lacking in their recovery process. Faced with a precarious financial situation, several women spoke of the need to get organized and be proactive in finding ways to support themselves.

Conclusion

Contrary to a deficit-focused perspective, the concept of recovery capital leads us to focus on what is going well in these people’s lives.

Keywords:

• Recovery capital
• strength
• long-term substance use disorder
• recovery process

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the participants who shared their experiences of recovery in this study. The authors also thank all the people who collaborated on this research project and the clinical settings for opening their doors.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the conceptualization and material preparation for the investigation. Data collection, analysis and finding interpretation were performed by M.B. supervised by K.B., J.T. & M.J.R. The first draft of the manuscript was written by M.B. and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [M.B.], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [01907-000].