What is Peer Recovery Support?

Peer support encompasses a range of activities and interactions between people who share similar experiences of being diagnosed with mental health conditions, substance use disorders, or both. This mutuality ... between a peer support specialist and person in or seeking recovery promotes connection and inspires hope.

Peer support offers a level of acceptance, understanding, and validation not found in many other professional relationships (Mead & McNeil, 2006). By sharing their own lived experience and practical guidance, peer support specialists help people to develop their own goals, create strategies for self-empowerment, and take concrete steps towards building fulfilling, self-determined lives for themselves. 

Recovery support services are non-clinical in nature and provide linkages to other services and supports in the community. The relationship of a coach to a participant differs from the role of a 12-step sponsor or professional clinical counselor; coaches do not diagnose, provide therapy, or help a participant work the 12 steps.

Substance use disorders are currently understood to be chronic conditions that require long-term management, like diabetes. Peer-based recovery support provides a range of person-centered and strength-based supports for long-term recovery management. These supports help people in recovery build recovery capital - the internal and external resources necessary to being and maintain recovery (Best & Laudet, 2010; Cloud & Granfield, 2008). 

The Courage Center is not a treatment center. We do maintain partnerships with vetted individuals and organizations. The Courage Center frequently helps individuals navigate their options with treatment centers, withdrawal management facilities, and other available resources.

Peer recovery support focuses on long-term recovery and is rooted in a culture of hope, health, and wellness. The focus of long-term peer recovery support goes beyond the reduction or elimination of symptoms to encompass self-actualization, community and civic engagement, and overall wellness.

What is a Peer Support coach?

A peer support specialist, or "coach" is someone with the lived experience of recovery from a mental health condition, substance use disorder, or both. They provide non-clinical support to others experiencing similar challenges.

At The Courage Center, our peer support specialists are trained, non-clinical individuals actively and authentically engaged in a recovery pathway, and who have received certification from the S.C. Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors. They strive to:

• Inspire hope that people can and do recover. 
• Walk with people on their recovery journeys. 
• Dispel myths about what it means to have a mental health condition or substance use disorder. 

Our peer support specialists partner with program participants, make suggestions, share their lived experience, and help participants find and follow their own recovery paths no matter how much it may differ from the coaches. These paths are customized and build on each individual's strengths, needs, and recovery goals.

Coaches typically provide the following services:

• Support participants in Identifying goals with an action plan 
• Meet weekly with participants for one-on-one coaching in person or by phone to help achieve the goals set 
• Offer All Recovery meetings
• Offer substance-free social activities (Movies, Fun Days, Skating, etc.) 
• Provide self-help education 
• Link participants to tools and resources

The unique relationship between the peer recovery coach and the individual in or seeking recovery is grounded in trust, and focused on providing the individual with tools, resources, and support to achieve long-term recovery. 

Is peer recovery coaching effective?

The most critical issue in achieving long-term recovery is not how to stop alcohol and/or substance use or manage acute withdrawal symptoms, but how to avoid returning to use in the weeks, months, and years that follow. Recovery support services, delivered by trained peer coaches who are in recovery themselves, help individuals and families initiate, stabilize, and sustain recovery from substance misuse and addiction.

People who have worked with peer recovery coaches provide strong testimonies of the positive impacts of peer recovery support on their own recovery journeys. Research supports these experiences. There is mounting evidence that people receiving peer recovery coaching show reductions in substance use, improvements on a range or recovery outcomes, or both, in addition to achieving: 

• Decreased criminal justice involvement
• Improved relationships with treatment providers
• Decreased emergency service utilization
• Reduced re-hospitalization rates
• Improved access to social supports
• Greater housing stability

Peer-based recovery support offers unique benefits that other methods do not. Peer support immediately reduces feelings of isolation and provides a sense of belonging. The young people we serve often feel more comfortable dealing with complex issues when they are in groups primarily of their peers. They find practical, real-life guidance from others on the same journey for navigating the struggles – large and small - of recovery. Our experience is that young people are much more open to receiving information and suggestions when coming from a peer because it, in part, defuses the barrier of resistance to authority. Our peer support specialists break the cycle of shame and open doors to new and exciting ways of life in recovery.

"The Courage Center provides several aspects of support that are not available anywhere else in our community. The level of education on addiction and its ripple effect including all of the family dynamics has been amazing. The Courage Center supports young people on their recovery journey, but also supports their parents, siblings, and grandparents who are equally in need of recovery."

- Family Participant