“Therapeutic Places” for People with Alcoholism: Using Life Histories to Understand Rhythms and Place in Social Life

Abstract

This study used life history interviews to clarify the daily life experiences of four people who developed alcoholism and then embarked on recovery. The study of “therapeutic landscapes” in human geography has shown that establishing an attachment to or “rootedness” in a place is essential for recovery from addiction. However, prior studies focused on public treatment environments and therefore lacked sustained focus on the daily lives of people grappling with alcohol addiction. This study introduces the concept of “therapeutic places” and reframes simple essentialist understandings of place to underscore how place can be found in recurring events that change from day to day with social relationships, as well as how daily rhythms produce these relationships. Although interviewees initially created “therapeutic places” through the rhythms of drinking, those places were eroded by discord between the rhythms of drinking and those of normative social life. Eventually, their health suffered and therapeutic places created by drinking no longer made sense. Consequently, a need for new places prompted interviewees to attend self-help groups, which promoted recovery. These meetings then became places where people with alcoholism could interact and form new social relationships. Thus, both formal and informal gatherings became therapeutic places as attendees established their own personal rhythms in alignment with the rhythms of their social lives. They created a sense of place through positive affirmations of self and others using repeated actions, like praying or writing haiku. The creation of therapeutic places is ambiguous in form as it involves processes of accepting loss and facing fears of a life of sobriety.