“People are social creatures who need human interaction to drive and sustain their physical, intellectual and emotional development. The determination of who they interact with from the time of birth throughout their lifetimes is critical to who they become, how they behave, and how they are perceived (or misperceived) by others outside their immediate social environment. Becoming immersed in new environments filled with caring, positive, empathetic, empowering people can have significant impact on people whose ability to thrive has been compromised by substance-use disorders. A properly implemented social model plan can enhance a person’s recovery process.” – Ron Luce
Recovery is the process of resiliency and metamorphosis within the whole recovery village, accomplished through the collaborative effort of all members, including those who are early initiates in the change process. It is about people in community holding shared power over their own recovery destinies in ways that the group is invested in each each other. “In service” is not in the lesser context of a passive recipient of care, but more accurately in service as a collective action of humans helping other. In service to each other for the greater good of all. In service to the community they have formed, together.
If we truly wanted people to initiate and sustain recovery, the primary strategy of clinical interventions would be to help people create mutual support structures that they may actively participate in for their benefit. Cultivating connection and shared purpose in service to others and connection to recovery community. Helping others can itself be a vital element in the stabilization of recovery (Pagano et al 2004, Borkman et al 1998, Best & Hennessey, 2025, White, 2009). It is a powerful restorative force for us to cultivate.
While in service peer support is thriving informally and often out of sight in our communities, our systems of care are increasingly viewing in service within the context of peer support as a distinct, formalized, regulated and funded services rendered primarily one to one by a certified person providing narrowly defined interventions for compensation. Gatekept for funding and regulatory purposes. This is a fundamental departure from its origin. Peer support as interpersonal sharing of information and life experiences, offering practical help, and interacting in ways that enhance emotional and social well-being (Polcin, et al, 2014). Much of what is occurring is a departure from the origins of the model which was collaborative and rooted in authentic recovery community. Failing to acknowledge and uphold the broader concept of “in service” peer support provided within a Social Model of addiction recovery to benefit the interests of industry would be a step backwards for our social movement to expand recovery across America.
What is the Social Model of recovery?
The Social Model views addiction recovery as a process of personal transformation and social integration, where individuals in recovery help one another to find meaning and connection to others. Since addiction often develops in a social context, recovery must also. These social models of recovery programs work primarily by immersing individuals in a supportive community that emphasizes shared experiences and social connections as the foundation for a new, recovery-oriented culture. A culture in which members form identities around that shape their entire lives. Transformative in the deepest sense.
Key Mechanisms and Principles:
- Mutual Support and Experiential Knowledge: Social Model recovery communities can exist within formal programs or informally within the broader society. They are built around the idea that people can learn from the lived experiences of others in recovery. People in longer term, sustained recovery support the transmission of recovery and help guide people with less experience in ways that build recovery capital in all of its forms. Early recovery initiates also learning to support the community effort. This is accomplished in non-hierarchical ways in which everyone has voice and choice. Hope is fostered, palpable to all involved that reinforce that recovery is a probable outcome for everyone.
- Community as a Functional Family: A crucial element of in service mutuality is creating a sense of belonging and community, effectively replacing the individual’s previous substance-using social network or augmenting healthy support with positive, recovery-focused ones. This process of change is both relational and cultural. It is perhaps best articulated in William White’s 1996 book Pathways: From the culture of addiction to the culture of recovery: a travel guide for addiction professionals. As White notes a change in culture involves moving from addiction to recovery through deep immersion in recovery community. While such a journey is highly personalized, it often requires significant shifts in relationships and values that change members’ world views.
- Mutual Aid (Giving and Receiving Help): All of the people within these networks derive benefit and foster support for every other member. This is a powerful dynamic that at the individual level that builds self-esteem, self-efficacy, and a sense of purpose. At the group level it builds deep connections and community recovery capital. A process of community level change as articulated in Seeing the connected forest through the individual trees – A cascade model of building recovery capital through community and connections (Stauffer, W. Best, D. 2025) or Overcoming Alcohol and Other Drug Addiction as a Process of Social Identity Transition: The Social Identity Model of Recovery (Best et al, 2015).
Benefits of Social Model Recovery Processes:
- People who were in social model programs reported stronger recovery identity and greater day-to-day meaningfulness. Further, on any given day for an individual, meaningfulness was higher on days recovery identity was stronger than usual for that individual, and lower on days when recovery identity was weaker. (Lancaster JH, Apsley HB, Brick TR, Cleveland HH, 2025)
- Social model processes support participant capacity to navigate conflict and helps members foster the ability to navigate social and environmental challenges to recovery (Polcin, et al, 2014).
- Early recovery often begins with participation in peer groups, where individuals experience acceptance, empathy, and accountability. Through activities such as chairing meetings, mentoring newcomers, and organizing events, individuals begin to rehearse pro-social and civic roles within the safe context of a recovery community (Kelly & White, 2012).
- Programs that self-identified as social model oriented were shown to have similar or better outcomes than clinically oriented treatment programs that were typically more expensive (Kaskutas et al. 2008; Kaskutas, Ammon & Weisner 2003-2004; Borkman et al. 1998)
Social Model / Mutual Aid and the Pathway to Civic Engagement:
Recovery is a socially generative process with broad benefits to the broader community. Social Models organically foster the development of competencies that strengthen empathy, leadership and collaboration while building individual and community level recovery capital. These benefits extend beyond the recovery community as recovery capital fuels the development of social capital. The Life in Recovery surveys conducted in recent years across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia consistently demonstrate that individuals in recovery exhibit high levels of volunteering, voting, and community service. Things which benefit our whole society.
- In the UK version, recovery was associated with a 900% increase in volunteering, alongside large improvements in family participation and employment (Best et al., 2015). Communities with more people in recovery are better places to live for everyone because of this deeper level of civic engagement.
- The US survey found that more than half of respondents in long-term recovery volunteered in civic or community organizations, and over two-thirds reported helping others with substance use problems (Laudet, 2013).
Social Model society level benefits
The benefits of Social Model Recovery processes extend far beyond the individual and our restorative of social capital. Recovery-oriented communities contribute to public health, social inclusion, and civic renewal in measurable ways. Dr David Best, (2016) describes these dynamics as recovery-generative ecosystems or a helix of connectivity in a recent interview I did with him to explore future opportunities for recovery research. Networks of mutual aid and civic engagement that multiply positive outcomes over time. In this sense, the social model transforms recovery from a personal and highly individualized process into a public asset. In that same UK Life in Recovery Survey, he and his colleagues found that recovery leads to lower healthcare and criminal justice costs and higher rates of employment and tax contribution (Best et al., 2015). These models can reduce reliance on formal treatment and support structures and reduce societal negative perceptions.
In Closing:
The social model of addiction recovery reframes recovery as a collective achievement rather than a formalized service structure within our treatment system. While we can foster the social model of addiction recovery in formalized care settings, we risk losing capacity to foster to its fullest capacity as we increasingly see peer support as “a service” rather than a community “in-service” process. Authentic social model processes include service as a mutual and bidirectional process and not a distinct professionalized externally credentialed and funded intervention.
As Dr. Thomasina Borkman (1999) observed a generation ago, recovery communities are “schools of democracy,” where individuals learn the practices of mutual responsibility and collective care. The benefits of recovery thus radiate outward—strengthening families, revitalizing neighborhoods, and enriching civic life. In this light, recovery is both a public health goal and a social movement that enhances the vitality of the whole society.
As William White warned in his 2013 paper on the State of the New Recovery Advocacy Movement, if we only pursue formalized peer services as the central focus of our efforts, we will fail and need to start a movement all over again. This is what he was talking about.
It is the key process of “in-service” mutual support that builds grassroots recovery movements. In each successive time over movement iteration, we have allowed it to be co-opted into a commercial product that loses its vitality. We then rise again to form yet another social movement to regain our focus, before it once again gets lost into formalized treatment structures. The community grounded knowledge, the practice-based knowledge and academically measured knowledgebase make it clear that our greatest opportunity to expand recovery rests in fostering community recovery beyond narrowly defined and metered services within the medical model. We will eventually do so, the question is if we will do this now or wait for another generation to do so. I hope we do it sooner rather than later.
Sources
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Best, D., et al. (2015). Life in Recovery: An Examination of the Recovery Experience in the UK. Sheffield Hallam University. https://shura.shu.ac.uk/12200/1/FINAL%20UK%20Life%20in%20Recovery%20Survey%202015%20report.pdf
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