Study title

This dataset includes anonymised transcripts of in-depth interviews seven individual interviews with drug service users about their experience with multiple relapses into illicit substance misuse and seven individual interviews with addiction therapists about their experience with supporting service users through multiple relapses into illicit substance misuse. The interviews were collected in order to access people's lived experience perspectives of relapse into substance misuse, with semi-structured questions focusing on the felt experience of relapse as well as the perceptions of recovery thereafter.Despite a recent emphasis on 'recovery' from drug and alcohol dependency within the UK's current drug policies (Best, De Alwis, Burdett, 2017) approximately 75% of drug service users relapse within the first twelve months of completing structured treatment (Statistics of Drug Misuse England, 2017). However, literature about the lived experiences of drug service users and how they make meaning of recovery, particularly after having relapsed, is scarce (Koester, Anderson, Hoffer, 1999; Lancaster et al., 2015). Additionally, views of service providers on clients' experiences of relapse have been widely disregarded in addiction scholarship, although these have been recognized as impacting the service user's identity throughout treatment (McIntosh, McKeganey, 2000). Therefore, this project will explore the differences and similarities of perspectives on relapse between drug service users and relevant drug service providers, with the overall aim to generate novel understanding of relapse, and, consequently, recovery from drug misuse. As such, the project seeks to address the following research questions: * What are service users' lived experiences of repeated relapse from recovery and the ways in which these impact the service users' meaning-making of recovery? * What are service providers' perspectives on relapse and how do these inform the ways they treat and...