“The Tools You Use Will Be Different to the Tools I
Use”: How People Accessing Community Addiction Services in Ireland Define Recovery.

The purpose of this research is to explore how people accessing support from Chrysalis Community Drug Project define and understand recovery.

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Using a qualitative research design involving 12 semi-structured interviews with Chrysalis service users, this research explores the meanings people attach to recovery and how they understand it. The findings indicate that participants understood recovery as a broad, individualised, evolving, and relational process of rebuilding or constructing a meaningful life, involving improvements in wellbeing and quality of life, in which substance use may or may not be a central feature.