Though the term has a long history associated especially with 12-step-based approaches, the modern ‘recovery’ era in British addiction treatment services can be dated to its forefronting by governments in Scotland and England in May 2008, a new dawn (Scottish strategy cover) which would reinvigorate treatment services stuck in the rut of preventing harm and crime rather than redeeming and regenerating lives. This hot topic reminds us the roots of the recovery era in the desire to contain public spending, queries interpretations which demand more of former problem substance users than many less disadvantaged citizens manage to achieve, and asks what in theory and in practice this all means for treatment services. The underlying theme is that in an “age of austerity”, the ambitious rhetoric was not matched by the “intensive support over long periods of time needed to become drug free” and – notwithstanding genuine advocacy in the interests of a better future for patients – instead at a political level helped legitimise advancing the withdrawal of support in the form of long-term treatment..........