Recovery Identity and Supporting Student Development Through Collegiate Recovery Programs

Recovery Identity and Supporting Student Development Through Collegiate Recovery Programs

-Ahmed Hosni

Collegiate Recovery Programs are designed to support students on campus who self-identify as being in recovery, to maintain the positive changes they have made to their relationship with substances. Historically, CRPs were abstinence-focused and supported students whose recovery pathways resembled more traditional pathways such as 12-step programs. The field has been shifting to include students who are on a path to healthier living and reducing the harms associated with their substance use, but not by abstaining from substance use altogether.

This shift in the field of collegiate recovery is also occurring across other recovery services and fields as well, which makes sense as campuses are often a microcosm of society and lead the way in navigating social change. This has left the staff and programs serving students navigating changes to their substance use to determine who they are meant to serve and how do they serve multiple pathways to recovery simultaneously and with limited time and resources.

One question that I continue to consider, as we watch recovery and what it means to be a person in recovery change and evolve, is how salient the identity of being a person in recovery is across all the pathways to recovery. This is the important question to consider when deciding whether a CRP is the appropriate referral or resource for a student. So much of the positive impact a CRP has on a student is due to the identity of being a person in recovery it shares with other students within the community. In this way, CRPs are affinity groups, or groups of people with a shared background or identity characteristic that meet regularly to engage in activities or discussion.[1] For a CRP to create an environment that is emblematic of affinity spaces, promotes academic success and healthy identity development, and provides a sense of belonging to students in recovery, having a mutual identity that unifies the participants is necessary.

For these reasons, identity saliency must be considered when determining for whom the CRP is an appropriate referral. This means that the question of whether individuals with different pathways to recovery, especially abstinent pathways and harm reduction pathways, believe that they share an identity with one another is essential to determine if CRPs work as designed for individuals with identities outside of who they are designed to support. To move forward changing the structure of a program and a field without these considerations may not benefit either group of students.

Instead, programs and their staff should consider that harm reduction and services for students using harm reduction approaches have existed on college campuses for decades. Campuses and professionals serving students in recovery must realize that it is important to serve students well, and that homogeneous program design for individuals with separate needs is not ideal. Much like we refer students to our trusted campus colleagues and community partners for challenges students face outside of our scope of practice, doing so for students who don’t have a salient recovery identity may be best. Ideally, a CRP will be aligned alongside other programs designed to support students with substance use concerns so that a continuum of care and support can form to help students who don’t have a salient recovery identity yet, explore their own use, and end up in the CRP if they find abstinence is necessary.

Many CRPs have begun to serve multiple groups with salient recovery identities whose pathways to recovery are different from one another. It is imperative that the services provided remain intentionally designed using best practices for recovery supports and student development, and individualized for each student’s participant. If our field continues moving toward more programs whose participants are a mix of abstinence-based recovery and harm reduction pathways, research around the recovery identities of the separate pathways and differences in how they are best served is prudent.

Ahmed Hosni is Assistant Director of the Student Life Student Wellness Center at The Ohio State University, and Director of Recovery at the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery. As a person in long-term recovery since 2007, his passion for supporting young people in or seeking recovery is personal. Ahmed’s experience as a First Generation-Economically Marginalized student pushes him to advocate for equitable and just processes and policies that provide all people what they need to access education and culturally appropriate well-being resources. Ahmed received a B.S. in Community, Family, and Addiction Sciences from Texas Tech University, where he was a member of the Center for Collegiate Recovery Communities and president of the Association of Students About Service, and received his MSW from The Ohio State University. He is currently pursuing his Ed.D. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University. Ahmed is grateful for the opportunity to serve as a board member of the Association of Recovery Schools and as a past chairman of the board for the Association of Recovery in Higher Education.

[1]The Proven Impact of Affinity Spaces: Race, Research & Policy Portal