"In this context, “recovery capital“ is the sum of personal and social resources at one’s disposal for addressing drug dependence and, chiefly, bolstering one’s capacity and opportunities for recovery” (Cloud and Granfield, 2001).

"The recognition of drug dependence as a multi-factorial health disorder, which often follows the course of a relapsing and remitting chronic disease, has spurred calls to shift the focus of drug dependence treatment from acute care to an approach of sustained recovery management in the community. Sustained recovery management applies many of the central components of recovery capital and the Sustainable Livelihoods framework. Service wise, a sustained recovery management approach offers the following:

"The WHO Lexicon of alcohol and drug terms (1994, p. 55) defines ‘recovery’ as:

"Maintenance of abstinence from alcohol and/or other drug use by any means. The term is particularly associated with mutual-help groups, and in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other twelve-step groups refers to the process of attaining and maintaining sobriety. Since recovery is viewed as a lifelong process, an AA member is always viewed internally as a ‘recovering’ alcoholic, although ‘recovered’ alcoholic may be used as a description to the outside world;

"Drug use often develops from being occasional to problematic: ties with close family members and non-using friends are gradually severed, while school and professional performance can be seriously affected and may come to a premature end. As a consequence, the normal process of socialisation, the integration of an individual from adolescence to adulthood as an independent, autonomous member of society, is jeopardised and this often leads to a gradual exclusion into the margins of society. However, this is a two-sided process.