Studies of natural recovery (Klingemann et al., 2009; Sobell et al., 2000) exclude individuals who have accessed formal treatment, although varying in how strictly treatment is defined (Bischof et al., 2002). Many are based on media-solicited samples of debatable generalizability (Rumpf et al., 2000). Those based solely on recovered individuals can identify factors that discriminate between abstinent recovery (AR) and nonabstinent recovery (NR), but not factors associated with the overall likelihood of recovery. Even those that include nonrecovered individuals (Bischof et al., 2001, 2003) ignore the role of treatment in recovery.
