The first issue. Staying clean is the floor, not the ceiling.
Maine recorded roughly 390 fatal overdoses in 2025, a 20% drop from the year before, and the state's third straight year of improvement.
In the words of Maine's opioid response director, that progress "saved an additional 100 lives" in one year (Office of the Governor). A hundred people who get another shot at the rewrite. That's what this letter is about: the comeback is real, it's happening everywhere, and staying clean is only the first line of it.
Here's the idea behind the name. Addiction wrote a story into you, its own corrupted code. Recovery is two jobs: learning the code (how recovery actually works, the patterns, the tools, the moves) and rewriting the story, line by line, day by day. And there's a bug in the system we all have to manage. Around here we call it Bobo, the malware in your source code. You never fully uninstall the dis-ease; you quarantine it, patch around it, and keep it from executing. That takes daily work and other people. But here's the truth under all of it: nobody can run this rewrite for you, and nothing outside you ever fixed it. It's an inside job.
I'm not writing this from the sidelines. I've lived the darkness, the broken trust, the loneliness, the loss. And I've lived what comes after, because recovery gave me back the things addiction took: my family, my identity, my purpose, my education, my hope. This letter exists to shine a light on the good that happens when we refuse to give up, restored relationships, second chances, laughter, freedom. Recovery is not always perfect, but a better life is possible, one day at a time. That's not a slogan to me. It's my life.
Who this is for: anybody recovery-curious, anybody new to recovery, anybody with long-term recovery, anybody on their path, and the people who love them. There are many paths, and this letter doesn't rank them: find YOUR path, any path, just find one. What you'll get, every two weeks: reported news stories from the recovery world, real comeback stories, the source-code advice, one Debug lesson on keeping Bobo quarantined, a challenge, and tools that actually help. Every fact passes our checksum before it ships.
CDC's provisional data estimates 69,973 overdose deaths in 2025, down almost 14% from 81,313 in 2024, and the third consecutive annual decline. Opioid-involved deaths fell from roughly 55,296 to 44,564, and nearly every state improved. The honest caveat: new synthetics like medetomidine and xylazine are making the street supply more dangerous even as deaths fall, so the win is real but fragile. CDC/NCHS · NPR
South Carolina's Department of Public Health reported that overdose deaths fell 31.3% from 2023 to 2024, the state's second straight annual decline. "Even though overdoses are happening, we are intervening quickly, and we are saving lives," said Julia Horan, who leads DPH's Substance Use Prevention Unit. The caveat from the same report: fentanyl was still involved in more than 900 deaths in 2024, so officials say prevention, treatment access, and public education all have to keep scaling. SC DPH · Charleston City Paper
Facing a €31 billion annual drug trade and more than 7,600 overdose deaths a year, the European Council unanimously adopted a new EU drug strategy in June. The five pillars: preparedness, prevention, security, harm reduction, and international cooperation, including wider access to overdose-reversal medicine and stronger treatment and social reintegration programs across member states. Euronews
Earlier this year, Volunteers of America Mid-States and the City of Murray opened a Recovery Community Center offering free peer support, weekly recovery meetings, life-skills classes, rides to recovery events, and referrals for housing, work, and mental health. "This is a place for positive growth. It is a place for friendship. It is a place for healing," said city councilwoman Bonnie Higginson. Small town, real infrastructure, a model more places are copying. Murray Ledger & Times
Denver's 5280 High School is one of the largest of only 43 recovery high schools in the country, a tuition-free public charter where about 109 students work toward a diploma and sobriety at the same time, with recovery coaches, therapists, and daily peer meetings built into the school day. Roughly 70% of the student body has held at least six months of sobriety. "When we're talking about sobriety, we're talking about all mind-altering substances," recovery director Keith Hayes told ABC's Nightline. ABC News · 5280highschool.org
Alamosa absorbed 17 million prescription pain pills between 2006 and 2019, about 77 pills per resident per year. Now the valley is building real recovery infrastructure: the Hope in the Valley treatment center opened in July 2025 with detox and residential rehab, peer coaching is expanding, and recovery meetings run daily instead of four times a week (The Colorado Sun). It matters more than ever: Colorado was one of only three states where overdose deaths ROSE 10% or more in 2025, per CDC data. Our state needs its recovery builders.
The biggest policy story in recovery right now: the federal budget bill passed in July 2025 cuts Medicaid spending by roughly $1 trillion over ten years, with changes starting January 2027, work/community-engagement requirements of 80+ hours a month for most nondisabled adults under 65, plus eligibility checks every six months (Penn LDI). Medicaid is the biggest payer for addiction treatment in America; researchers estimate about 1.6 million people in Medicaid substance use disorder programs could lose coverage. "If these cuts happen and people lose access to treatment, I don't see how we wouldn't see an increase in overdose deaths," said Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, New York's addiction services commissioner.
The key wrinkle: people with substance use disorders, including those in qualifying treatment programs, figure into the exemption framework, but implementation guidance is still developing and the details are not settled (The Colorado Sun). In Colorado alone, an estimated 375,000 people could be affected; in Alamosa County, two in five residents rely on Medicaid.
Nothing changes today. Between now and 2027: keep your contact info current with your state Medicaid office so you don't miss renewal notices, ask your provider about the treatment exemption when guidance lands, and keep records of your treatment enrollment. We'll track this story every issue.
Dalton started using at 11, trying to cope with feelings he had no words for. At 15 he first walked into Rise Recovery, a San Antonio nonprofit now in its 50th year of serving young people and families at no cost. The turning point was the hardest one imaginable, losing his father to an overdose. Seven years sober at 27, Dalton now works at Rise as a Youth Recovery Specialist, walking teens through the same door he came in, helping with everything from staying clean to college applications.
"That purpose that I found, that passion that I had, was definitely motivated through that experience of losing somebody so close to me."
A decade of addiction that started with prescription pain pills and slid into heroin. A husband lost to an overdose. Nearly losing her kids. Jenny got treatment at BrightView Health and is now five years sober, a homeowner, a business owner, and a mom raising her two children. She tells her story publicly so people still in it know the way out is real.
"I just lost my husband to an overdose, so I had to get it together for them... I own my home now. I own a vehicle. I have a company that's in my name, that is what kept me going."
🏆 RECOVERY HERO OF THE MONTH
Starting next issue, this spot belongs to a reader-nominated hero, someone in recovery quietly showing up for their community: a mentor, a ride-giver, a 2 a.m. phone-answerer. Know somebody? Nominate them: recoveryhero@therecoverycode.org
Plenty of people white-knuckle their way to abstinence and stop there, same resentments, same isolation, same shame, just without the substance. That's miserable, and it's unstable, because a life with nothing good in it is a life worth risking.
The people who stay out, like Dalton and Jenny above, run three unglamorous lines of code. They stay connected: whatever that looks like on your path, a group, a mentor, a group chat, one honest friendship. The format matters less than the honesty. They build something: a business, a family, a job, a degree, something worth protecting on a bad day. They give it away: helping someone newer is the closest thing recovery has to a cheat code, because you can't reach back and pick up at the same time. None of that requires being fixed, healed, or done. It requires showing up while still cracked. That's the whole trick.
Corrupted line: "You're doing great, you don't need all that recovery stuff anymore."
Bobo is malware, and he's patient. He doesn't throw errors while you're struggling, he waits until your system runs clean. That's when he starts scanning for an unpatched vulnerability and whispers that the maintenance is overkill, that you've outgrown the routine. Notice what he's actually asking for: not a relapse, just a little less patching on the quarantine.
The patch: run your recovery routine ON the good days, especially the good days. The check you skip when everything's fine is the exact hole Bobo has been scanning for. He never deletes. He only stays quarantined.
Week 1: Text one person from your recovery circle something honest, not "I'm fine." How it actually is.
Week 2: Do one thing for someone newer than you: a ride, a coffee, a "how are you really."
Work trip. Visiting family. Rural town, no car, snowed in, or it's 2 a.m. and the walls are getting loud. None of that has to stand between you and a meeting anymore: virtual rooms run around the clock, around the world. Recovery is portable. Take it with you.
When: Twice daily, 9:00 AM MT / 11:00 AM ET · 8:30 PM MT / 10:30 PM ET
Where: Zoom (hosted from Denver, Colorado)
Meeting ID: 506 504 8770 · Password: 874858
House rule, as always: "Respect the room you're in."
Online Intergroup of AA, directory of online AA meetings running 24/7, worldwide
NA Virtual, NA's hub for virtual meetings, any time zone
In The Rooms, free live online meetings across many recovery paths, all week long
SMART Recovery Online, filter the meeting finder to online sessions
Recovery Dharma Online, meditation-based recovery meetings, daily, from anywhere
Same rule as always: these are doors, not "the" way. Wherever you are tonight, one of them is open.
Getting sober as a mom with a big career and a bigger drinking problem, McKowen lands on the idea that gives this issue its title: sobriety isn't a consolation prize or a life sentence, it's the luckiest thing that ever happened to her. Zero preachiness, a lot of honesty about shame and starting over. If you read one recovery memoir this year, start here.
There are many paths to recovery. None of these is "the" way, they're doors. Find your path, any path, just find one.
Hotlines: SAMHSA National Helpline 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (free, confidential, 24/7) · 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call/text 988 · Cocaine Anonymous 310-559-5833
Find treatment: findtreatment.gov, confidential, free, official locator
Find a meeting (every path counts): AA · NA · CA · CoDA · SMART Recovery · Recovery Dharma
Get connected, get moving: Young People in Recovery, peer support, life skills, local chapters · The Phoenix, free sober active community
Colorado readers: 5280 High School (Denver recovery high school, tuition-free)
Nominate a Recovery Hero: recoveryhero@therecoverycode.org
Contact us: support@therecoverycode.org
A hundred extra people are alive in Maine this year. In Denver, 109 teenagers went to school today and stayed sober doing it. In San Antonio, a kid who started using at 11 is now the guy holding the door open. None of them knew, on their worst day, that this part was coming.
Neither do you. You're not a finished program, you're mid-rewrite, and the next line is yours to write. See you in two weeks. Keep debugging, and keep Bobo out of the build.