Notes from a peer support specialist

The first year out of treatment is its own country. The structure of inpatient care is gone. The applause from family has quieted. What is left is an ordinary Tuesday — and ordinary Tuesdays are where recovery is actually won or lost.

My job as a peer support specialist is not to have answers. It is to have been there. When someone calls me at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday because they just drove past the old neighborhood, my value is not advice. It is the simple fact that I have made that same drive, white-knuckled, and made it home.

What I tell people most often: the urge to use is not a sign that recovery is failing. It is a sign that recovery is working — that the feelings you used to numb are now reaching you. The work is learning to feel them without running.

And what I remind myself most often: I am not anyone's higher power. I am a phone call. I am a coffee. I am a person who picks up. Most of the time, that is exactly enough.