Introduction

Service user involvement in research is by its nature political, in that it is aiming to effect change and improvement (McLaughlin, 2011). This is even more the case when service users disagree with established views as to what constitutes ‘health’ and ‘normality’ as regards their particular condition. Survivors of mental health treatment testify in this volume and elsewhere (Sweeney et al, 2009) to the fallibility and inadequacy of medical diagnoses and solutions (Rose, 2001). Survivors of alcohol and drug treatment have yet to develop their critical and political voice. This chapter considers some of the issues involved.

Faced with the damaging psychosocial consequences of extensive alcohol use, which are likely to include diminished personal esteem, loss of family support, loss of income and, ultimately, homelessness, alcohol service users tend to accept with little question a view of themselves as simultaneously immoral and ill. Mutual aid experts and academics support both positions:

Most people who are or were ‘alcoholics’ appear to agree. They are likely to have learnt to talk about ‘becoming sober’, ‘being in lifelong recovery’. They will try to do without the very substance that, like prescribed medication for other conditions, often enabled them to take part in that society, at least for some of the time (Ettorre, 2007). They may struggle desperately for approval from family and friends. The general acceptance of a moral ingredient to the condition skews research into its causes, affecting researcher, researched and public alike, telling us most about the society that has promoted it.

It was my ongoing distress as a recovered ‘alcoholic’, aware of the lifelong damage caused to my family and to me by this approach, which led me to examine the social injustice and oppression involved.