The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Curriculum and Instruction STUDENTS’ LIVED EXPERIENCES IN COLLEGIATE RECOVERY PROGRAMS AT THREE LARGE PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES A Dissertation in Curriculum and Instruction by Jason Whitney © 2018 Jason Whitney Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education December 2018 ii The dissertation of Jason Whitney was reviewed and approved* by the following: Patrick W. Shannon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Rachel Wolkenhauer Assistant Professor of Education Hobart H. Cleveland III Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Margaret A. Lorah Affiliate Assistant Professor of Counselor Education Gwendolyn M. Lloyd Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Curriculum and Instruction *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT To better understand the various ways that participation in Collegiate Recovery Programs (CRPs) is reflected in the lived experience of students in recovery and the various ways in which they construct and organize their realities, I interviewed 12 students in Substance Use Disorder (SUD) recovery in CRPs at three academically-recognized universities that are also designated to be “party schools” for clues regarding how students in recovery in CRPs make sense of their pasts, their present-day lives, and their futures. I examined their use of narrative, their use of social and cultural discourses, and the shifting subject positions they adopted, co-opted, and disputed in their ongoing identity construction as individuals in recovery. To capture the students’ voices and the contexts in which their meaning-making occurs, I used Seidman’s (2016) three-interview series for in-depth phenomenological interviewing. I tracked students' shifts through the multiple, overlapping, and contradictory discourses they adopted, and I identified three main discursive themes: Recovery discourses were primarily rooted in the discourses of Alcoholics Anonymous. A second set of discourses instilled an imperative to work towards success, driving students to acquire the prolonged, specialized educations and other qualifications necessary to gain a professional career, to redeem their ruinous use of alcohol and other substances, and to take active measures to mitigate against the dreaded prospect of falling out of what Barbara Ehrenreich (1989) calls the professional-managerial class (PMC). In the third set of discourses, students in CRPs defined and claimed social power for their CRP and helped establish various means for students in recovery to be “cool” in college. Using discourses in creative combinations to make sense of their experience and to (re)position themselves, students in CRPs resisted college discourses that invited them to return to active use of alcohol and other substances. The findings expand upon existing research and can be useful in designing curriculum, instruction, and other structures to better support students in recovery in CRPs. iv Keywords: Alcohol use, addiction, addiction recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol recovery, co-curriculum, college students, collegiate recovery communities, collegiate recovery programs, cool, crystal meth, curriculum and instruction, discourse theory, drug use, fraternities, Greek life, interpretivism, millenial, narrative, Narcotics Anonymous, New Linguistics, phenomenology, positioning theory, prevention, professional-managerial class, recovery, recovery-oriented systems of care, recovery support services, self-authorship, sociocultural theory, student affairs, substance use disorder, wellness v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... ix LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... xi DEDICATION ............................................................................................................. xiii Chapter 1: Introduction Placing the Excessive Use of Alcohol and Other Substances by College Students in Context .......................................................... 1 The Choice to Focus on Discourses and “Language-in-Use”............................... 9 Positioning Theory ................................................................................................ 14 Summary ............................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2: Literature Review ...................................................................................... 18 Addiction Research Traditions that Inform the Study of Lived Experience in Context .......................................................................................................... 18 Emerging Adulthood in Addiction Literatures ..................................................... 28 Long-term Studies of Addiction in the Life Course and “Maturing Out” ..... 30 Early-Onset Severe Dependence with a Chronic and Recurrent Course in Emerging Adults ............................................................................................ 33 Studies on Emerging Adults in Recovery ............................................................. 34 Studies on Alcohol and Drug Use by College Students ....................................... 36 College Students in Recovery: Two Phenomenological Studies ......................... 38 What We Know about CRP Participants .............................................................. 40 Phenomenological Research on Students Participating in Collegiate Recovery Programs ........................................................................................................ 42 Summary ............................................................................................................... 45 Remaining Gaps in the Literature ......................................................................... 46 Chapter 3: Methods ...................................................................................................... 48 Context .................................................................................................................. 49 The Context of Three Collegiate Recovery Programs .......................................... 49 The Context of the Three Universities in the Study ...................................... 55 The Context of A.A. ...................................................................................... 59 Position Statement ................................................................................................ 62 Participants ........................................................................................................... 65 vi Selection of Participants ................................................................................ 65 An Overview of the 12 Participants .............................................................. 66 Procedures ............................................................................................................. 77 Data Collection ..................................................................................................... 78 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 80 Data Organization .......................................................................................... 80 Process of Analysis........................................................................................ 81 Trustworthiness ..................................................................................................... 84 Funding Sources ................................................................................................... 89 Summary ............................................................................................................... 89 Chapter 4: Results ........................................................................................................ 91 Part I: Recovery Identity ....................................................................................... 93 A.A. Storylines: Narrating Excessive Use .................................................... 97 The Problem with “Hitting Bottom” Narratively .......................................... 100 A.A. Storylines: Joining A.A. (or N.A.) ....................................................... 105 Aligning Themselves with the Group............................................................ 121 Cliffton: A Case Study in the Consolidation of Two Competing Identities ................................................................................................. 122 How Discourses Continue to Invite Students to Use AODs ......................... 130 The Future Orientations of Students in Recovery ......................................... 132 Summary of Part I ......................................................................................... 135 Part II: Professional-managerial Class Success Discourses ................................ 136 How Hard Work and Self-denial became Cardinal Virtues in the PMC ....... 144 CRPs: Where 12-step recovery meets the discourses of the professional- managerial class ....................................................................................