ABSTRACT

Recovery-focused mutual-help organizations (MHOs) are non-professional, peerled entities that have emerged to help individuals with addiction problems achieve and sustain long-term remission. At their core, these groups are inherently social and often self-labelled as “fellowships”, having the potential to catalyze or facilitate shifts in individuals’ social identity away from being someone involved in active addiction toward being a person “in recovery”. Consequently, MHOs are highly relevant to any discussion of the shifts in social identity that may occur as someone begins the process of addiction recovery.