The Art of Life Itself

The Art of Life Itself is a blog that explores the theoretical and practical dimensions of the journey of recovery from addiction in a broad, expansive context. Inspiration is drawn from  a diverse range of source material from academic, personal, and practical quarters. At this formative interstice in the history of drug and alcohol treatment in the UK, critical attention is paid to the emerging recovery movement and the constellation of contingent questions associated with its inception.

The title intimates that recovery requires an existential commitment; a commitment that is fulfilled through the creative engagement of the whole of ones life. It suggests that recovery, in a very real sense, is an aesthetic journey: one sculpts, shapes, forms and re-forms the boundaries of ones being and through this self-cultivation enters into radically new relationships with the material world, other people, and ones own self.

If recovery is an art of life, then it is also an art of government. Recovery is a meeting point of institutional technologies of domination and power, and individual technologies of the self. As we define or define our own selves through new engagement with the world, we simultaneously assent to being defined by others: the pluralism of authorities with whom the social self negotiates in the process of self-constitution. Thus, recovery raises unexplored questions about how our conduct is governed by others, and how we govern ourselves.

This broad reading invites multidisciplinary scrutiny that is generally eclipsed by the medical and legal discourses that dominate the drug and alcohol field. Recovery reframes discussion on addiction, substance use, policy and treatment in a way that solicits, if not demands more comprehensive attention. The Art of Life Itself is a contribution to expanding the horizons of intellectual inquiry, and promoting dialogue in, between and beyond the traditional disciplines of our field.

Stephen Bamber, 7th April, 2009
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