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30 Contemp. Drug Probs. 647 (2003)
Recovery Careers of People in Alcoholics Anonymous: Moral Careers Revisited

handle is hein.journals/condp30 and id is 657 raw text is: Contemporary Drug Problems 30/Fall 2003 647 Recovery careers of people in Alcoholics Anonymous: moral careers revisited BY HEATH C. HOFFMANN The concept of the moral career has been used to study the normative sequence of statuses that the mental patient (Goffman, 1959), the marijuana user (Becker, 1953), and the psychiatric resident (Light, 1980) experience as they develop a new identity. This work is limited, though, because these three authors do not discuss variations from the normative model of the moral careers they describe. In this paper I reexamine the moral career looking at participants in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). While a wealth of research has been devoted to studying the recovery careers of AA participants, the primary focus has been on the moral career of the member who abstains from alcohol, commits herself to AA activities, and embeds herself in social networks that largely consist of other AA members. As a result, we learn mostly about the ideal career path that people should follow in recovery, and not the range of moral careers that members actually exhibit. I compensate for this shortcoming by analyzing the range of roles and statuses AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author gratefully acknowledges the support of Training Grant T32-AA-07473 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, under the direction of Paul Roman, during the preparation of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Joe Hermano- wicz, Aaron Johnson, Hannah Knudsen, and Suzanne Baker for comments made on an earlier version of this paper. Direct correspondence to: Heath C. Hoffmann, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602; (706) 542-1876; heathman @arches. uga. edu. © 2003 by Federal Legal Publications. Inc.

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