A variety of factors, including the shame of stigma, can convince you that you must recover alone. However, recovery is not a sole endeavor as humans are naturally social creatures that seek connection and belonging to thrive. Without support, you can lose sight of the meaning and purpose behind the work you have been doing to heal. When you exit treatment, it can feel like you have lost your structured support system. Understanding peer support services is important to your recovery process.
At Driftwood Recovery, we know that connection to a community of peers is vital to sustained recovery. Through connection, you can find the support needed to meet and overcome challenges in life and recovery. Peer support services are a source of guidance, compassion, support, and accountability to lead a courageous life in recovery. With a commitment to connection and community, our peer-driven alumni remind you that you are not alone in your recovery.
However, you may question why peer support is so valuable to sustaining recovery. Expanding your understanding of connection can provide insight into the importance of peer support services.
Peer Recovery Support: The Value of Peer Connection
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), peer support includes activities and interactions between those with similar experiences and conditions. Whether you have experienced challenges with substance use disorder (SUD) or other mental health disorders, peer support can help you thrive. Mutually supportive relationships offer the opportunity to build skills and change unhealthy patterns. By sharing experiences, you and your peers can find connection, acceptance, understanding, guidance, and validation. You are empowered to achieve goals for a fulfilling and self-determined life.
Yet, how does the experiential nature of peer support enable and encourage maintaining recovery? Your relationships inform your sense of self and how you navigate the world. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, positive social connectedness encourages you to feel supported, valued, and cared for. Therefore, peer support has a long history as a source of mutual support in treatment and recovery. However, peer support services are not solely built on sharing experiences.
What Are Peer Support Services?
Peer support services present services designed for and delivered by those in recovery. Many different adaptive-driven peer support services, from support types to services, can support whole-person healing. Listed below are some of the resources you can find in peer support services:
- Support types
- Emotional
- Empathy and care are found in individual interactions and support groups
- Fosters self-esteem and confidence
- Empathy and care are found in individual interactions and support groups
- Informational
- Insight and skills are gained from sharing knowledge or life and work skills
- Classes, training, seminars
- Insight and skills are gained from sharing knowledge or life and work skills
- Instrumental
- Access to referrals and services for tangible resources
- Housing, transportation, employment, food, clothing, healthcare
- Access to referrals and services for tangible resources
- Affiliation/Social
- Readily accessible spaces, groups, and activities
- Learning, social and recreational skills, community, and belonging through connection with others
- Readily accessible spaces, groups, and activities
- Emotional
- Peer support services
- Recovery centers
- Peer-led support groups
- Job training
- Health and social services
- Parenting classes
- Child care services
- Transportation services
- Sports leagues
- Volunteering
- Sober activities and events
- Peer mentoring
All peer support services can be valuable to healing the mind, body, and spirit. However, services like peer mentoring showcase the power of connection as a vital part of the recovery process.
Peer Support Services: Empowering Others With Peer Mentoring
As noted in Substance Abuse and Rehabilitation, peer mentorship is when individuals in long-term recovery provide support for those in early recovery. You can offer nonprofessional and nonclinical assistance through peer mentorship to help peers achieve sustained recovery. As a peer mentor, you walk alongside those in early recovery to help them develop a customizable plan and pathways to long-term recovery based on individual strengths, needs, and recovery goals.
At its core, peer mentoring embodies emotional, informational, instrumental, and social support to meet each person where they are on their recovery journey. Therefore, peer mentorship can be a source of reciprocal healing as it empowers you to help yourself and others. Whether mentorship is the right path for you or not, there are numerous ways you can empower yourself and others with peer support services.
Finding Ways to Engage in Peer Support Services
One of the many ways you can contribute to your healing is by paying it forward. Giving back to your community can support sustained recovery as it helps you change the way you see yourself, others, and the world. By giving back to your sober community and the wider community, you can rediscover your sense of self-worth, belonging, and purpose through connection. Listed below are some of the ways you can give back to your community by engaging in an alumni program:
- Donate your time to alumni
- Help set up for meetings
- Mentoring
- Become a sponsor
- Volunteer
- Homeless shelter
- Animal shelter
- Pantry
- Treatment center
- Library
- Museum
- Hospital
- Nursing home
- Local parks project
- Community cleanup
Engaging in peer support services speaks to the power of connection as a source for healing and long-term recovery. No one should be left alone to recover or to figure out how to reintegrate into everyday life. With an active alumni program, you can remind yourself and your peers that recovery is a community effort.
Learning How to Pay it Forward at Driftwood Recovery
At Driftwood Recovery, we believe a strong Alumni Family gives you the safe space and community to break the cycle of suffering. Through the sharing of experiences, compassion, respect, and support, strength and hope can be fostered. Together, in our peer-driven alumni network, you and your peers can find the guidance, encouragement, and accountability needed to pursue your life goals and be a productive member of society. A truly active and vibrant alumni program is about more than abstinence. Our strong alumni program is about building a foundation for connection with the self and others to thrive in recovery. With mutually supportive connections, you are not alone in building the courageous and purposeful life you deserve in long-term recovery.
People often feel like they must recover alone, but recovery is a process that is best supported by a community. Through interpersonal relationships, you can find connection, compassion, support, guidance, and accountability to lead a meaningful life in recovery. With a strong alumni program, you can access peer support services to find and foster connections with yourself and others. Moreover, engaging with alumni can empower you to not only heal yourself but support the healing of your peers. Whether you volunteer or become a mentor for peers in early recovery, giving back reinforces the value of connection for healing the mind, body, spirit, and community. Call Driftwood Recovery at (512) 759-8330 to learn how alumni can support you.