STUDENTS’ LIVED EXPERIENCES IN COLLEGIATE RECOVERY PROGRAMS AT THREE LARGE PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES
Open Access
- Author:
- Whitney, Jason
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 01, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Patrick W. Shannon, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Patrick W. Shannon, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rachel Marie Wolkenhauer, Committee Member
Margaret Ann Lorah, Committee Member
Hobart H Cleveland III, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Alcohol use
addiction
addiction recovery
Alcoholics Anonymous
alcohol recovery
co-curriculum
college students
collegiate recovery communities
collegiate recovery programs
cool
crystal meth
curriculum and instruction
discourse theory
drug use
fraternities
Greek life
interpretivism
millenial
narrative
Narcotics Anonymous
New Linguistics
phenomenology
positioning theory
prevention
professional-managerial class
recovery
recovery-oriented systems of care
recovery support services
self-authorship
sociocultural theory
student affairs
substance use disorder
wellness - Abstract:
- To better understand the various ways that participation in Collegiate Recovery Programs (CRPs) is reflected in the lived experience of students in recovery and the various ways in which they construct and organize their realities, I interviewed 12 students in Substance Use Disorder (SUD) recovery in CRPs at three academically-recognized universities that are also designated to be “party schools” for clues regarding how students in recovery in CRPs make sense of their pasts, their present-day lives, and their futures. I examined their use of narrative, their use of social and cultural discourses, and the shifting subject positions they adopted, co-opted, and disputed in their ongoing identity construction as individuals in recovery. To capture the students’ voices and the contexts in which their meaning-making occurs, I used Seidman’s (2016) three-interview series for in-depth phenomenological interviewing. I tracked students' shifts through the multiple, overlapping, and contradictory discourses they adopted, and I identified three main discursive themes: Recovery discourses were primarily rooted in the discourses of Alcoholics Anonymous. A second set of discourses instilled an imperative to work towards success, driving students to acquire the prolonged, specialized educations and other qualifications necessary to gain a professional career, to redeem their ruinous use of alcohol and other substances, and to take active measures to mitigate against the dreaded prospect of falling out of what Barbara Ehrenreich (1989) calls the professional-managerial class (PMC). In the third set of discourses, students in CRPs defined and claimed social power for their CRP and helped establish various means for students in recovery to be “cool” in college. Using discourses in creative combinations to make sense of their experience and to (re)position themselves, students in CRPs resisted college discourses that invited them to return to active use of alcohol and other substances. The findings expand upon existing research and can be useful in designing curriculum, instruction, and other structures to better support students in recovery in CRPs.