From social contagion to community cascade: A generative model of recovery

This article advances a generative model of recovery that reconceptualizes recovery as a community development process rather than a solely individual, personal or therapeutic outcome. Drawing on qualitative data from volunteers at The Phoenix, a peer-led sober active community in the United States, the study advances cascade as a concept that extends existing contagion-based accounts of recovery spread. Central to this model is a flywheel effect, in which a shift from individual to collective identity builds momentum through repeated, shared practice, fueled by the circulation of value within the community itself, and sustained within distinct cultural spaces that operate by alternative norms to those of mainstream society. This momentum extends simultaneously across multiple domains, generating ripple effects across families, communities, and institutional settings, rather than passing along a single interpersonal line. In this account, recovery communities function as sites of community development, building what we term generative recovery capital.