8: Hope, the Future of Recovery

Hope connects us to our future aspirations, however as a psychological construct it is often misunderstood, confused by its direct meaning, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary is an ‘expectation of something desired; or desire combined with expectation’. This supposes that hope is idiosyncratic, an abstract concept linked to expectation and desire, not constructive cognitive reasoning. It is understandable therefore that it is often compared with hopelessness, where hope is thought to be lost in a despairing situation. This sees hope and hopelessness as existing at two ends of an emotional continuum, which given the association with despair can mean it is under appreciated as a positive psychological process (Requero et al., 2020). In positive psychology (PP), hope is considered to link a person to their aspirations and is explained as the determination to accomplish goals believing there can be many pathways to do this (Boniwell & Tunariu, 2019). In addiction recovery, this has a twofold purpose, firstly in appreciating that recovery is person centred and achievable, a dual principle seen in recovery-oriented systems of care in mental health (Davidson, 2016; Davidson et al., 2021), and secondly, motivation to engage in growth-seeking behaviour that better aligns future outcome with personal aspiration.