Let’s Talk About Labels (And Why They Suck) Alright, community—let’s get real for a second. How many times have you caught yourself shrinking under some label society slapped on you? "Addict." "Anxious." "Hot mess express." (Okay, that last one might just be my internal nickname, but you get the point.) Stigma is everywhere, sticking to us like gum on a shoe. And honestly, it’s time we started scraping it off. We’ve all heard the big voices in mental health and addiction spaces shouting, “Break the stigma!” But what does that even mean for regular people like us, slogging through the day-to-day? Here’s a not-so-secret secret: breaking stigma doesn’t have to look like a TED Talk or a viral Instagram post. Sometimes it’s as simple (and as hard) as refusing to let those sticky labels decide who you get to be. So, how do we do it? First, let’s laugh at the absurdity—because if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’re just giving stigma free rent in our heads. The w...

  Robots Don’t Judge: How AI Is Crashing the Recovery Party (and Why That Might Be a Good Thing) Let’s get one thing out of the way: nobody in recovery ever asked for a robot sponsor. The idea sounds straight out of some Silicon Valley fever dream—“Hey, what if your daily check-in could text you back at 2 a.m.?”—but here we are. In 2025, artificial intelligence isn’t just for sci-fi or spam calls. It’s showing up in real addiction recovery work, sometimes uninvited, sometimes surprisingly helpful, and always a little weird. I’ve seen it firsthand. I work for IGNTD, an online recovery platform started by Dr. Adi Jaffe—a guy who built this thing on the belief that recovery should fit you, not the other way around. No shame. No one-size-fits-all. Just radical flexibility and meeting people where they’re at, whether that’s rock bottom or just “kinda tired of feeling stuck.” Turns out, AI fits right into that vibe. It doesn’t judge, it doesn’t roll its eyes, and it definitely doesn’t ca...