Claudia Mitchell
ABSTRACT
Luxury drug and alcohol rehabs exhibit the hallmarks of wealth and comfort as selling points, in direct contrast to the 12-step programming they most often use for treatment. 12-step programs are designed by and for recovering addicts, and center service, unity, and recovery as their priorities, explicitly rejecting materialism and marketing of any kind. Analysis of the different communication materials used by luxury rehab facilities and 12-step programs reveals two differing rhetorics of recovery. Technical communicators have an opportunity to construct new modes of communicating with and informing addicts seeking recovery using the rhetoric they have constructed as creator-members of 12-step programs. With a thorough understanding of 12-step programs’ rhetorics of recovery, technical communicators can move beyond the goal of selling recovery and towards building community and participatory design which centers addicts’ unique needs and modes of understanding their addictions.
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