From The Varieties of Recovery Experience: A Primer for Addiction Treatment Professionals and Recovery Advocates

By William White, MA and Ernest Kurtz, PhD

There are three styles of recovery initiation: quantum change, conscious incremental change and a less conscious process that sociologists refer to as drift.

Quantum change, also referred to as transformational change, is distinguished by its vividness (emotional intensity), suddenness (lack of intentionality), positiveness and permanence of effect (Miller and C’de Baca, 2001).

Quantum change can occur as a breakthrough of self-perception or insight (an epiphany) or as a mystical or religious experience.

Both experiences produce fundamental alterations in one’s perception of self and the world.

The liberation from alcohol and other drug problems and related changes flow from these core alterations of identity and values.

Quantum change is sometimes experienced as a Damascus-type3 conversion (religious, spiritual or secular in nature) that precisely and forever demarks addiction and recovery.

[3 The reference to Damascus refers to the Biblical account of the transformation of Saul of Tarsus, the orthodox Jew and Christian persecutor, into St. Paul, the Christian missionary, on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus.]

Such recovery conversion experiences are rooted in calamity—often referred to as “hitting bottom.”

Recovery catalyzing breakthroughs have been described in the research literature as an “existential crisis” (Coleman, 1978), a “naked lunch experience” (Jorquez, 1993), a “rock bottom experience” (Maddux and Desmond, 1980), a “brief developmental window of opportunity” (White, 1996), a “crossroads” (Klingemann, 1991, 1992), an “epistemological shift” (Shaffer and Jones, 1989) and a “radical reorientation” (Frykholm, 1985).

Quantum change as a pathway of addiction recovery has a long history and is often the ignition point of historically important abstinence-based healing and religious/cultural revitalization movements (White, 2004b).

Quantum change occurs in religious, spiritual and secular forms.

Illustrative of this experience is the report of Samuel Hadley whose religious conversion at the Water Street Mission in New York City marked the beginning of a lifetime of service to God and other alcoholics.

Although up to that moment my soul had been filled with indescribable gloom, I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sun shine into my heart.

I felt I was a free man….From that moment till now I have never wanted a drink of whiskey, and I have never seen money enough to make me take one. I promised God that night that if he would take away the appetite for strong drink, I would work for him all my life. He has done his part, and I have been trying to do mine (Quoted in James, 1902, p. 203).

While there is a tendency to grant a special quality to these recovery conversion experiences, Bill Wilson cautioned against such glorification.

There is a very natural tendency to set apart those experiences or awakenings which happen to be sudden, spectacular or vision-producing….But as I now look back on this tremendous event [his own transformative change experience]…. it now seems clear that the only special feature was its electric suddenness and the overwhelming and immediate conviction that it carried to me. In all other respects, however, I am sure that my own experience was not different than that received by every AA member who has strenuously practiced our recovery program (Wilson, 1962).

In contrast to the lightning strike of quantum change, incremental recovery involves a time-encompassing and stage-dependent process of metamorphosis.

Researchers have described many stage models of addiction recovery, including:

• Frykholm’s (1985) 3-stage model (ambivalence, lengthening periods of abstinence, and emancipation)

• Biernacki’s (1986) four-stage model (a resolution to quit either through drift, rational decision or “rock bottom” experience; a detachment from the physical and social worlds of addiction, managing cravings and impulses and staying clean (abstinent), and becoming ordinary)

• Waldorf’s (1983, 1990) six-stage model (going through changes, forming a resolve, cessation experiments, becoming an ex-addict, learning to be “ordinary”, filling the physical, psychological, social, lifestyle void with family work, religion, politics, and mutual aid)

• Brown’s (1985) four-stage model (drinking, transition, early recovery and ongoing recovery)

• Shaffer and Jones’ three-stage model (experiencing turning points, active quitting and relapse prevention)

• Klingemann’s (1991) three-stage model (motivation, action, maintenance)

• Prochaska and colleagues (1992) six-stage model (precontemplation, contemplation, planning, action, maintenance, and termination).

Stage models suggest that the process of recovery begins before AOD use is moderated or terminated and that, while linear movement through particular stages is possible, the more common experience is a recycling through these stages before permanent recovery is achieved.

The repeated sequence that predates recovery stability might be constructed as follows: escalating AOD-related pain (I need to recover), the desire to change (I want to recover), belief in possibility of change (I can recover), commitment (I am going to recover), experiments in abstinence (I am recovering), and movement from sobriety experiments to sobriety identity (I am an ex-addict; I am a recovered/recovering alcoholic/addict; I no longer use or misuse alcohol or other drugs).

Stages of change models are very popular among addiction professionals, but have come under attack for the lack of empirical evidence supporting them (Sutton, 2001; West, 2005).
Quantum change and incremental change have been described as two discrete phenomena, but we have listened to recovery stories in our travels that have dimensions of both.

For example, we have seen individuals who repeatedly cycled through preparatory stages of recovery (what we have here referred to as recovery priming) but whose point of recovery stabilization was marked by a profound, life-altering quantum change experience.

The third style of recovery initiation is one of drift-the gradual cessation/reduction of AOD use and related problems as a matter of circumstance rather than choice.

Here the addict simply “goes with the flow” only to find in retrospect that events and circumstances lead away from drugs and the culture in which his or her drug use was nested (see Waldorf, 1983; Biernacki, 1986, 1990; Granfield & Cloud, 1999).

Developmental maturation and environmental change can elicit changes in alcohol and other drug use in some individuals in ways that do not follow the conscious, selfengineered styles of change depicted in stages of change models.

For example, some studies of female heroin addicts depict recovery not as a central goal but as an inadvertent outcome of severing contact with former drug using environments and relationships (Gerstein, Judd & Rovner, 1979).

Some individuals drift out of addiction through processes similar to how they drifted into addiction, including finding an intense alternative pursuit that gives new meaning to one’s life (Cloud & Granfield, 2001).

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