There are variations in recovery styles based on the extent to which one's disorder becomes a central part of one's identity and one's degree of affiliation with a larger community of recovering people.  There are :

·        acultural styles of recovery (no affiliation with other recovering people);

·         bicultural styles of recovery (affiliation with recovering people and people without recovery backgrounds); and

·        culturally enmeshed styles of recovery (emersion in a culture of recovery).

People in recovery display highly variable styles of relationship to professionally-directed treatment, peer-driven support services, and mutual aid societies.  The behavioral health field is slowly (and painfully) learning to work within this variability of styles rather than attempting to program all recovery experiences through a narrow, single-pathway vision of how recovery is achieved and sustained. .