Women In Alaska Constructing The Recovered Self: A Narrative Approach To Understanding Long -Term Recovery From Alcohol Dependence And /Or Abuse

Abstract

Autobiographical narratives are explored in a qualitative approach regarding women in Alaska who have been successful in long-term recovery from alcohol dependence and/or abuse. The literature review includes an integrative approach to theoretical perspectives from the disciplines of Human Communication, Anthropology, and Psychology. The epistemological orientation of Constructionism grounds this study, as well as provides a framework for theoretical understandings from the narrative co-construction of self-identity, gender studies, health belief and health behavior change models, anthropological views on alcohol and culture including Native American and Alaska Native approaches, and various psychological and transpersonal strategies for overcoming alcohol addiction. Today, a diverse resource of recovery paradigms and tools are available to women who have problems with alcohol. As a result, this study explores the applicability of various methods of recovery as they occur in the real lives of women in Alaska. Two emergent themes of recovery derived from nine narrative interviews are discussed in regard to identity reconstruction: (1) Survivorship and (2) the Transcendent Self. The emergent themes represent the reconstructed constitutive interpretations of a woman's self-identity as the recovered self. The process of recovery from alcohol dependence and/or abuse constitutes a uniquely personal and culturally specific journey for women. A recovered lifestyle is a completely different way of being for the woman who had previously been immersed in a culture of alcohol addiction---she now must construct a healthy self. A woman's process of recovery from alcohol addiction cannot be separated from the world of social/cultural/gender interactions in the construction of a healthier lifestyle. Whether a recovering person's social interactions are with professionals or are everyday interpersonal exchanges with intimates and others, they form the context within which the discursive evolution of identity is embedded. The narrative stories of the lived world of women in Alaska who are maintaining long-term recovery from alcohol problems provide an understanding of cultural, ethnic, and gender influences, various treatment and recovery paradigms, relational tensions, and the process of identity construction in the maintenance of ongoing recovery.