They had desisted from offending for a period of, on average, 28 months. The respondents had used several types of drugs and had committed several offences.The interviews lasted between one and three hours. Their anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed. Respondents nothing were informed about the project, first briefly by the gatekeeper, later on in detail by the researcher. All respondents signed an informed consent (describing the research theme, their (confidentiality) rights and a contact address for further information). The interviews were recorded, after the consent of the respondent had been obtained. Afterwards transcripts were made and processed using specific software for qualitative analysis (NVivo) using a codebook. We used the four phases of the cognitive transformation theory as the basis for this codebook and the further analysis.

3. Results3.1. Recovery rather than DesistanceThe respondents were asked how their desistance processes had evolved, both with regard to drug use and to offending. Starting from the four phases desistance process, described by Giordano, we notice that the desistance and recovery process of drug-using offenders is complex.For some of the respondents, their offending was limited to selling drugs, without this being dealing at a large scale. Rather they sold drugs to their friends, with no other goal than to obtain some extra money for their personal drug use. Mostly, they never earned a lot of money with it, so for them desistance from offending was easy and a logical result of their drug use desistance, although there could be a lag between the desistance from drug use and the desistance from dealing.

I was dealing drugs. But it was not dealing, dealing. It was for my own use and as a favour for my friends. Our ��gang�� that was fun. I did not earn a lot of money with it, so for me it was easy to stop doing it. (Male, 38, desisted for 1 year)A significant group of the respondents committed offences in order to have enough money to sustain their own drug use. Their offences were property offences and could be denominated as the so-called acquisitive offences. In these cases, offending only started after the drug use and could be considered a consequence thereof. Because of this, we see that the respondents consider their desistance from offending to be subordinate to their drug use desistance.

Their first goal was to stop using drugs. Because both offending and the use of drugs were related to each other, they were convinced that desistance from drug use would lead to a stop in their offending.I stole to have money for food and also a bit for drugs. I stopped offending because Drug_discovery it was not necessary anymore because I did not have to buy drugs anymore. (Female, 37, desisted for 9 months)For me, stop using drugs and committing offences were related.