How Can We Speak About Recovery with One Voice
Over the last two years, Faces & Voices of Recovery has been working to find a way to describe and talk about recovery so that people who are not part of the recovery community understand what we mean when we use the word recovery. One of the important findings from our groundbreaking 2004 survey of the general public was that people believe that the word recovery means that someone is  trying to stop using alcohol or other drugs. We realized that we needed to find a way to talk about recovery that would allow us to be clear and believable to the general public.  Some of the important things that we've learned from our research about how to talk to people about recovery are:
1.  Making it personal, so that we have credibility
2.  Keeping it simple and in the present tense, so that it's real and understandable
3.  Helping people understand that recovery means that you or the person that you care about is no longer using alcohol or other drugs. We do this by moving away from saying in recovery to saying in long-term recovery, talking about stability and mentioning the length of time that the person is in recovery
4.  Talking about your recovery ---NOT  your addiction
5.  Helping people understand that there's more to recovery than not using alcohol or other drugs, but that part of recovery is creating a better life.