Tammy Adler Foeller, founder of OpenDoor Women’s Recovery Alliance, recounts the day she stopped rescuing her daughter Stephanie during her addiction. . It was a desperate, faithful surrender that allowed her daughter to find sobriety, sober living, and eventually community.

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.