Recovery Doesn’t Always Look Clinical—Sometimes It Looks Like Waterslides

zero thought all vibes; sharing taste one newsletter at a time

This newsletter is different. I just spent the week at a recovery conference held at a water park in Ohio—watching people reclaim joy on waterslides between conversations about trauma and transformation.

As someone who works in recovery but isn't in recovery myself, I'm always learning from the community's stories. This week reminded me why simple technology can be life-changing, how data could revolutionize outcomes (and ideally policy/funding), and why my childhood of opening our home to anyone who needed it feels adjacent to this work.

Plus, you'll see why sometimes healing looks like adults acting like kids—because they finally can.

What Is Recovery?

Recovery is a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential.

For those that do not know, recovery is not an end-state; people don’t end recovery and go back to their old life, that is considered a relapse. Recovery looks different for everyone, but for many, there are similarities in their stories: rock bottom, financial ruin, estrangement from children/parents, divorce, overdose, prison… and then the realization of all of that, a pit of despair, but eventually, often with support and sometimes treatment, people can begin to build back up.

Recovery is not Treatment.

Treatment or inpatient care is typically short-term (very rarely more than a month), clinically focused, and often reimbursable by insurance.

Recovery [Residences] are long-term (months or years), peer-focused, and rarely reimbursable by insurance—although that may change soon¹.

Recovery Residences are where outcomes really get made. For many people, recovery begins during a rebuild… and hospital beds [Treatment Centers] are expensive. Oftentimes, Recovery Residences have multiple beds in a room and low weekly fees to help people in recovery get back on their feet. Recovery is peer-focused, meaning the process involves being supported by your peers. This duality leads to the peer-mentor relationship, and is different than sponsorship, which is often more mentor-mentee focused and found more so in group [AA/NA/12 Step] environments, but might ring a bell to some. Recovery Residences often have group recommendations and requirements, which means someone can be a peer mentoring others and still have a sponsor at their group… a tangent, but valuable to know and understand.

Addiction is a chronic disease; it is not cured, it is long-term, and that is where treatment and treatment centers fail (among many other reasons). This is why recovery residences and recovery community organizations are so important.

The Power of Community and Stories

The conversations I had this week will stay with me. There's something profound about sitting in a room where everyone understands the weight of the transformation. One person told me, the first thing they were told when they got into recovery was "When you join a group, buy a black suit," a reminder that in recovery communities, you'll attend funerals of people who didn't make it.

I met a man who, after 17 years in prison, told me he now prefers a 3-piece suit to slacks because it represents the dignity he's reclaimed. Another person shared how they stole drugs from the EMS truck they worked on, resulting in being all over the local news, going to prison, and losing their entire family because of it.

What struck me most was hearing these people’s stories, only for them to follow it up with, “young people today are experiencing worse, they are hitting rock bottom harder and faster than ever before,” I met someone who works in recovery now who their coworker said was the youngest person they'd ever seen enter recovery at 17—they'd started smoking and drinking at 12. They told me about a current resident who's doing well after coming in at just 16. Getting help early and being able to live in a recovery setting instead of going back home where triggers await, is incredibly valuable. It's another reason why short-term treatment (at an inpatient detox treatment center) is rarely the best solution for long-term recovery.

Overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 44. If you were worried about cancer (like me) you are over 3x more likely to die from an overdose if you are between the ages of 18 and 44. The substances are stronger, the fall is steeper, and the climb back up requires more support than ever. Even marijuana, as casual as it has become for many, remains a gateway for those susceptible to compulsive behavior.

This isn't a moral issue; it's recognition that addiction doesn't discriminate, it’s bipartisan, and for some, especially those with co-occurring disorders, any substance can lead to dependency.

Why Customer Experience Hits Different in Recovery

As a product manager and customer success professional, it's my job to support these organizations in the work they do and to meet them where they're at. That means creating tools that don't drag people across multiple applications and allow them to do their job without having to have five duplicate browser tabs open just to complete one task.

If we can make clients and peers’ lives easier and better during their recovery journey, we can help more people. If we can build product features that actually support recovery outcomes, we have a direct impact on whether someone stays in recovery or relapses.

Tech in this space has to be simple. The last thing someone rebuilding their entire life needs is to figure out some convoluted software workflow. We ask ourselves often: Does this feature actually benefit our customers?

The Data Goldmine We're Not Mining

Here's what gets me excited: because people stay in recovery residences for months or years, we have this incredible opportunity to actually track what works and what doesn't over the long haul.

Think about it… we can see what interventions actually move people forward and what approaches might be hurting their progress. We can spot patterns across different types of people in recovery and figure out how to improve outcomes based on real data, not just gut feelings. And not skewed outcomes pulled from treatment center post-discharge surveys… not to be harsh, but how many people who relapse care enough to click a link and fill out a questionnaire letting their treatment center know they are using again…

The recovery community is generating unlimited qualitative data every single day through stories, group sessions, and peer conversations. People are constantly sharing what's working for them and what isn't. We just need to get better at matching that storytelling with hard numbers and financial data to show local/state/federal legislators why supporting these programs makes economic sense.

Recovery residences are sitting on a data goldmine. If we can prove what works with actual outcomes, we can make the case for better funding and help way more people.

Sobriety and Waterslides

The conference was held at the Kalahari, a water park resort in Sandusky, Ohio. Recovery professionals and people in recovery were waking up at 6 AM to hit the waterslides before conference sessions started. After eight-hour days of intensive conversations about trauma and healing, whole teams would head straight back to the park to race down slides and float in lazy rivers.

Watching this unfold, I realized these people weren't letting anything get in the way of experiencing something. They were actively reclaiming youthfulness that, for many, had been stripped away from them in traumatic ways. Watching a 48-year-old man who'd spent years in prison absolutely light up going down a waterslide reminded me not to take these moments for granted and to be grateful for the childhood I was able to experience.

I've always had a natural inclination toward being a helper, supporter, and confidant—especially for people who don't have that directly in their lives. Growing up, I desperately wanted another sibling, and thankfully, my parents were more than okay with letting people stay at our house. Most summers in middle school and high school, our place was filled with my teammates, friends, and whoever needed somewhere to be. Many times with indefinite timelines, and I genuinely loved that constant energy as a kid.

Being able to do what I do now, working closely with a community that desperately needs support, feels like I get to live that again. Hearing people out, listening to their stories, I genuinely feel like I'm the lucky one for getting to have these experiences. There's something about creating space for people that has always felt natural to me.

Watching recovery happen at a water park reminded me that healing doesn't always look serious or clinical. Sometimes it looks like adults reclaiming the joy they never got to experience as children.

If this work resonates with you, or if you're working in recovery, technology, or community building, I'd love to hear your thoughts. The intersection of these fields has so much potential to create meaningful change.

1. This comes with its own set of problems [regulation, level criteria, and corruption], which I may write more on in the near future.