Mixed methods study of help seekers and self-changers responding to an online recovery survey

To compare self-changers (natural recovery) with help seekers on demographics, pre-recovery problem severity, and recovery beliefs and behaviors; and to augment these quantitative findings with information extracted from the qualitative stories of a subset of self-changers to explore themes in recovery paths as informed by a nascent natural recovery literature.

Quantitative secondary analyses were conducted with persons who had responded to a US nationwide online survey called 'What Is Recovery' (WIR) and who reported a prior lifetime alcohol problem (n = 5495). Six men and six women (with longer-term recoveries) interviewed later were asked to tell their 'recovery story from the beginning up to now'. These were coded using a narrative approach.

Compared with help seekers, self-changers were younger and never married: they did not differ on problem severity, gender, ethnicity or education. Self-changers identified with 'used to have a problem' more than in recovery/recovered, reported fewer years in that status, and reported more current, non-problematic substance use. A new concept of shadow help and shadow obstacles to help-seeking emerged from the qualitative analysis. Though self-changers believed that they had overcome their alcohol problem on their own, change actually occurred within a social context that allowed access to information, normative expectations, relationships, and other opportunities that provided important resources for change.

Findings imply that the concept of help-seeking needs to be re-conceptualized to include the informal help we found in this study.