Broadening the Base of Addiction Mutual Support Groups: Bringing Theory and Science to Contemporary Trends

Mutual-help groups have proliferated, diversified and adapted to emerging substance-related trends over the past 75 years, and have been the focus of rigorous research for the past 30 years. This book reviews the history of mutual support groups for addiction that have arisen as adjuncts or alternatives to Twelve Step Programs, including secular mutual support groups like Secular Organization for Sobriety, Smart Recovery and Women for Sobriety, and faith-based mutual support groups like Celebrate Recovery. It also considers the mutual support groups attended by families and friends of addicts. These mutual support groups are examined in terms of their histories, theoretical underpinnings and intended communities.

The structures common in mutual support groups have influenced the rise of a new recovery advocacy movement and new recovery community institutions such as recovery ministries, recovery community centers, sober cafes, sober sports clubs, and recovery-focused projects in music, theatre and the arts. This volume explores how collectively, these trends reflect the cultural and political awakening of people in recovery and growing recognition and celebration of multiple pathways of long-term addiction recovery.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Groups in Addiction and Recovery.

Jeffrey D. Roth is Editor of the Journal of Groups in Addiction and Recovery and the author of Group Psychotherapy and Recovery from Addiction: Carrying the Message. He is the medical director of Working Sobriety Chicago, an outpatient treatment program for addiction.

William L. White is a Senior Research Consultant at Chestnut Health Systems in the USA.

John F. Kelly is Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, USA, Program Director of the Addiction Recovery Management Service and Associate Director of the Center for Addiction Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA.