Student Support

Being a college student in recovery is challenging at best! While the college experience in the United States and elsewhere has always had a rich history of expanding minds, broadening horizons, and creating environments for intellectual and social revolutions, that story has changed considerably in the last thirty years. College has by all rights become a rite of passage marked almost exclusively by the grand epic narrative of the œparty experience.

People in recovery face many challenges as they re-construct their lives and create a life-long recovery focus. This is not always supported by society, and is even less supported in the realm of higher education. There is so much focus on maintaining and mitigating the damages of the college experience, there has been little focus on creating a place within higher education for this marginalized population.

Enter the Collegiate Recovery movement. If you attend a college or university that hosts a Collegiate Recovery Program, you have three tasks.

1. Be proud! You are part of the movement. You are creating a legacy for generations to come.
2. Invest yourself. You are doing ground breaking work, give it your all and it will come back to you exponentially.
3. Reach out. Not every college has a Collegiate Recovery Program or Community. Reach out to other schools and students who may really need the support of another student in recovery navigating the abstinence-hostile world of the college environment.

If you attend a college or university that does not yet have a Collegiate Recovery Program or Community, there are still ways to access support.

1. Connect with other students by becoming a student member of the Association of Recovery in Higher Education.
2. Attend the Association of Recovery in Higher Education Conference. Hundreds of students in recovery travel cross country to attend this fantastic event!
3. Connect with the Student Representatives of the Association of Recovery in Higher Education.
4. Check out Intercollegiaterecovery.org. Their mission is to connect students in recovery all over the world. They are created and managed by students at many different schools and are dedicated to promoting the college recovery movement.
5. Check out Young People in Recovery (YPR). Young People in Recovery changes the world so all young people in or seeking recovery are given the opportunity to become empowered. YPR creates and cultivates local community-led chapters through grassroots organizing and training.