The science of recovery capital: where do we go from here?

In order to capture key personal and social resources individuals are able to access in their efforts to overcome substance misuse, we introduced the construct of recovery capital into the literature. The purpose of this paper is to further explore the construct and include discussions of implications unexplored in our previous writings. In this paper we reveal the relationship between access to large amounts of recovery capital and substance misuse maintenance and introduce the concept of negative recovery capital. In doing so, we examine the relationships between negative recovery capital and gender, age, health, mental health, and incarceration.

There is an unknown but very large number of individuals who have experienced and successfully resolved dependence on alcohol or other drugs. These individuals refer to their new sober and productive lifestyle as "recovery." Although widely used, the lack of a standard definition for this term has hindered public understanding and research on the topic that might foster more and better recovery-oriented interventions. To this end, a group of interested researchers, treatment providers, recovery advocates, and policymakers was convened by the Betty Ford Institute to develop an initial definition of recovery as a starting point for better communication, research, and public understanding. Recovery is defined in this article as a voluntarily maintained lifestyle composed characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship. This article presents the operational definitions, rationales, and research implications for each of the three elements of this definition.

The addiction field's failure to achieve consensus on a definition of "recovery" from severe and persistent alcohol and other drug problems undermines clinical research, compromises clinical practice, and muddles the field's communications to service constituents, allied service professionals, the public, and policymakers. This essay discusses 10 questions critical to the achievement of such a definition and offers a working definition of recovery that attempts to meet the criteria of precision, inclusiveness, exclusiveness, measurability, acceptability, and simplicity. The key questions explore who has professional and cultural authority to define recovery, the defining ingredients of recovery, the boundaries (scope and depth) of recovery, and temporal benchmarks of recovery (when recovery begins and ends). The process of defining recovery touches on some of the most controversial issues within the addictions field.