The ‘imagined recovery community’: A conceptualisation of the recovery community.

In recent years the concept of the ‘recovery community’ has gained considerable momentum in both the academic literature, as well as government policy. Despite this, there remains a lack of understanding of the recovery community. This is a theoretical paper designed to provide our conceptualisation of the recovery community. Drawing on Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’, and MacMillan and Chavis’ ‘sense of community’, we propose that the recovery community can be perceived as ‘imagined’. A key component of our conceptualisation is language, and the power it has to unlock, and shape, the cultural beliefs of people in recovery from substance dependency, regardless of their location. The implications of this paper are that it further sparks debate into how we perceive people in recovery, as well as providing a platform that will continue to fuel the enthusiasm already behind the recovery community.