Kristen Crisp closes her Author of the Month series with a funny and uncomfortably honest look at what happens when a sober person steps back into a bar. From the awkward mocktail exchange to loud conversations, sloppy behavior, loneliness, aging, sadness, and social pressure, she describes a familiar alcohol-centered world through a very different lens.

Needle exchange programs are often debated from a distance. Michael Cline writes about them from the inside. He remembers using the Lower East Side Needle Exchange during active heroin addiction in the 1990s, learning safer injection practices, accessing clean supplies, and avoiding HIV. His piece is pro-harm reduction, but not simplistic. It asks what these programs can prevent, what they do not solve, and how they could connect more people to recovery.

Tim Lineaweaver remembers hearing that addiction is progressive as a warning, then discovering a more hopeful truth: recovery can be progressive too. In this personal reflection, he traces the shift from alcohol offering relief to alcohol taking over, then describes the difficult first months of sobriety, the wreckage that had to be repaired, and the gradual return of health, hope, family, and purpose.