Peer Recovery Support Series, Section III: Understanding the Pathway and the Process
Description
Successful recovery is a journey through a process of change. This webinar will explore the process and identify how peer specialists and providers can intervene in helping individuals with substance use disorders negotiate that recovery journey. The first step involves understanding important tasks and critical activities involved in recovery. There is a common process underlying the many different changes involved in recovery. Moving to free oneself from addictive behaviour involves finding the motivation, decision-making, commitment, effective planning, and implementation to overcome this bio-behavioural condition. We will also examine the multidimensional nature of substance use behaviors. Significant use of substances affects the brain and the body, and takes over the life space of the individual. Although many clinicians would like to impose change on individuals and make them quit using, the individual user must make the journey through recovery using personal coping mechanisms, seeking support and “scaffolding” for their compromised self-regulation, and by re-centring their lives. Finally, we will explore how outreach and treatment connect to the personal recovery process of individuals trying to recover from addictions.
Learning Objectives
- Describe key tasks of each stage of change and how they operate in the recovery journey.
- Understand the differences between early and later stages and process of change.
- Name and describe the three critical components of use disorders: neuroadaptation, impaired self-regulation, and salience or narrowing of the behavioural repertoire.
- Describe the difference between different types of mechanisms of change/recovery: change, generating processes of change and self-regulation mechanisms.
- Understand how “scaffolding” can be used to support self-control and self-regulation.