You realise you are better when you want to live, want to go out, want to see people: Recovery as assemblage.

BACKGROUND The lack of social and material perspectives in descriptions of recovery processes is almost common in recovery research. AIM Consequently, we investigated recovery stories and how people with mental health and/or addiction challenges included social and material aspects in these stories. METHOD We conducted focus group and individual interviews. We investigated how the participants narrated their stories and how they assembled places and people in their recovery stories. RESULTS We found that narratives of recovery became assemblages where humans and their environments co-exist and are interdependent. CONCLUSION As such, narratives about recovery are about everyday assemblages of well-being into which stories of insecurity are interwoven, without a start or stop point.