Community usually means a body of people living in a particular geographic area, but people in recovery from addiction often give the term another meaning. They create their own communities based on their sense of common identity and shared experience.

Sharing the Recovery Journey

Members of the recovery community have experienced addiction, treatment, and recovery in complex and yet always deeply personal ways. The complexity and the personal nature of the experience is captured by a metaphor that finds wide acceptance among people in recovery: Recovery is a "journey," and the journey is both personal and shared. Sharing forms community. Some have described the RCSP experience as a journey to discover what creates community in the context of recovery.

Sharing by Giving Back to the Geographic Community

In their local communities, many recovering people share strengths with each other and commonly devote much attention to “giving back” to the larger geographic communities in which they live.

The recovery community has made, and continues to make, enormous contributions to treatment and recovery in the United States. These contributions include the historic and current roles played by 12-step and other recovery support programs, the advocacy legacy of pioneers such as Marty Mann and the organization now known as the The National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence (NCADD), and the dedicated work of countless treatment professionals with experiential understanding of addiction and recovery.

The emerging peer recovery support services provided by RCSP projects are a continuation of the tradition of altruism among people in recovery.