Addictive disorders are chronic diseases that involve cognitive, emotional/perceptual, and behavioral symptoms, notably including compulsive urges to consume, loss of control over consumption, the presence of harm, and the continuation of the behavior despite such harm. The aim of this project is to develop an educational program focused on raising awareness of bodily experiences and associated physical (tachycardia, rapid breathing, etc.) and psychological states (sadness, anxiety, etc.), in relation to the perceptions experienced before, during, and after episodes of use, with a specific focus on alcohol use disorder.

The project involves a co-construction process bringing together patients in remission, healthcare practitioners, family caregivers, and researchers. The approach seeks to describe bodily experiences and their impact on associated psychological disorders (craving, loss of control, etc.) in order to name and characterize these experiences through narratives (1), raise awareness of the knowledge and skills acquired through living with addiction related to alcohol consumption (2), formalize experiential knowledge based on the examination of patients’ narratives (3), collectively compile statements that help articulate this experiential knowledge (4), co-produce typologies aimed at formalizing this experiential knowledge (5), and co-produce training frameworks enabling recognition of and dialogue about this knowledge within medicine and healthcare (6).

The participatory research project SAEXNASA aims to formalize a method whose purpose is to bring awareness to and structure patients’ experiential knowledge, with the goal of developing their capacity to manage their illness and disseminate experiential knowledge in healthcare. The composition of narratives and the thematization of experiential knowledge derived from these narrative texts will make it possible to identify patients’ ability to perceive these sensations, name these feelings, and describe how they deal with them. The research underlying this project focuses specifically on the relationship between narrative expression (the ways patients compose their stories) and the processes involved in thematizing knowledge gained through experience as articulated by patients in their narratives.

The approach underpinning the project mobilizes methods derived from narrative practices (Breton, 2022) in education and healthcare to promote awareness of patients’ knowledge, its verbalization, and its recognition. Through the co-construction of internal and external frameworks, the project also aims to enable the dissemination, recognition, and even validation of this knowledge at a societal level.

The SAEXNASA research methodology comprises four distinct phases, following a preliminary design stage organized by the project team and structured around a training–action–research dynamic:
(1) a phase aimed at engaging patients and supporting their narrative expression through individual interviews (up to three interviews);
(2) a collective development phase at the project team level focused on thematizing the experiential knowledge identifiable in the narratives, whose verbatim transcripts will have been transcribed and shared;
(3) a phase dedicated to structuring frameworks of experiential knowledge based on categories produced by the research–action–training group;
(4) a phase of disseminating these frameworks to certifying bodies, therapeutic education networks, the National Public Health Committee (CNS), patient associations, university departments of general medicine (DUMG), and university hospitals (CHU).