Section

Lived Experience & Community

Recovery culture, stigma, family, faith, workplace recovery.

Nearly Half of Recreational Cannabis Users Trust the Person at the Counter First. Four Percent Pick a Doctor.

A NIDA-funded survey of 1,023 people finds the budtender is the de facto public-health channel for cannabis.

A federally funded survey of 1,023 adults who used THC found dispensary staff the most trusted information source, ahead of friends and healthcare providers. What it means for clinicians.

Nov 12 minRead

More in Lived Experience & Community

96 total in this section

02Lived Experience & CommunityOct 29

"Being Sober Is Payment Enough." Why a Gift Card Works on Meth Anyway

A woman in a Maine rewards program said sobriety was payment enough. Why contingency management still works for meth and cocaine, what stimulant craving and flat, joyless weeks feel like, and what the evidence does and does not prove.

03Lived Experience & CommunityOct 23

She Used Meth Daily for Three Years and Says It Helped. Harm Reduction Never Built Anything for Her.

Filter's Kastalia Medrano writes from inside daily meth use about coping, stigma, and why purity-based federal sentencing punishes people for how clean the supply is.

04Lived Experience & CommunityOct 21

Seven in Ten People With a Substance Problem Say They're in Recovery. The Ones Who Don't Are Carrying More Shame.

A 2026 Stigma and Health study of 5,260 adults finds people who identify as in recovery use more support groups and cite far less stigma as a barrier to treatment.

05Lived Experience & Community

Earlier in Lived Experience & Community

Every piece in this section, most recent first.

Lived Experience & Community

Nearly Half of Recreational Cannabis Users Trust the Person at the Counter First. Four Percent Pick a Doctor.

More in Lived Experience & Community

"Being Sober Is Payment Enough." Why a Gift Card Works on Meth Anyway

She Used Meth Daily for Three Years and Says It Helped. Harm Reduction Never Built Anything for Her.

Seven in Ten People With a Substance Problem Say They're in Recovery. The Ones Who Don't Are Carrying More Shame.

Your Appetite for Risk Moves First. The Drinking Follows a Month Later.

He Was Paid $7 for a Clean Test. What He Heard Was 'Good Job.'

She Spent $300 to $400 a Day on a Whipped-Cream Gas. We Still Sell It Like That.

Earlier in Lived Experience & Community

Psychedelics Are Racing Toward FDA Approval. For Addiction, the Evidence Is Still Mostly Stories.

She Was Twenty and Stable on Buprenorphine. A Meeting Told Her She Wasn't Really Sober.

Nobody Had a Name for What Dominic Cipriano's Body Was Doing. Doctors Took Nine Months to Write One Down.

The FDA Keeps Clearing Nicotine Pouches. The Writer Who Quit One Cold Turkey Saw Searchlights.

Crystal Quigley Was Two Years Sober Before Fentanyl Got Her Back. Treatment Has to Plan for That.

Her Doctor Told Her to Take More. It Took 38 Months to Get Off Them.

Meth Took Everything From JJ Keller. A Hospital That Refused to Write Him Off Got Some of It Back.

Her Premium Tripled. Nobody Called That a Relapse Trigger — But It Was One.

A Veteran Spent Nine Years Hiding His Recovery. Now He Tells Strangers On Purpose.

Peer Support Isn't an Add-On to Recovery. It's the Mechanism — and We're Burning Out the People Who Provide It

There's No Pill for a Cocaine Craving. A $20 Gift Card Might Be the Closest Thing We Have.

Sobriety Didn't Give Beth McDonough Her Life Back. She Had to Build a New One.

Addiction Runs in Circles Through Families. One Counselor Mapped the Way Out.

Cutting Back Counts. American Treatment Just Won't Say So.

Brad Pitt Started Drinking Again. The Internet's Reaction Says More Than His Wine Glass Does.

Craving, Not Willpower, Is What Actually Predicts Relapse

Norway's Heroin Program Isn't a Cure — It's the Ceasefire That Makes Recovery Possible

Your Craving Isn't on a Lab Rat's Timetable — And That's Better News Than It Sounds

You Can Be Falling Apart and Growing at the Same Time — That's Not a Contradiction, It's Caregiving

You Didn't Just Use Alone. Your Brain Was Trying to Replace Something It Couldn't Find.

"This Ends With Me": A Counselor Wrote the Essay Her Own Field Doesn't Usually Publish

Why Confrontation Fails and Connection Works: What the Science of Craving Actually Says About Relapse

Your Benzo Taper Isn't Too Slow. The Guidelines Finally Caught Up to What Patients Were Already Saying.

Being Someone Else's Proof Recovery Works Can Quietly Undo Your Own

The Colleague Who 'Just Gets It' Isn't Being Nice to You. She's Doing Her Job.

Researchers Are Arguing Over What the Word 'Recovery' Even Means. People Living It Already Know.

A Proclamation Isn't the Same Thing as Being Seen

Recovery Month's Theme This Year Is 'Together.' The Psychology Says Why That's Not Just a Slogan.

Harm Reduction Was Built for Opioids. If You Use Meth, You Already Know It Shows.

Yale Just Proved Craving Doesn't Cloud Your Judgment. It Rewrites It.

Nobody Gets Fired for Taking Blood Pressure Meds. Suboxone Patients Aren't So Lucky.

Brad Pitt Says He Can Drink Again 'in a Restrained Manner.' Your Brain Didn't Get the Memo About Restraint.

Filter Magazine Is Closing, and It Took the Only Newsroom That Read You as an Expert on Your Own Life

Your Craving Isn't Just a Feeling. It's Quietly Rewiring How You Learn.

The Workforce Paid to Treat You Judges You Hardest

A Mother Held Up Her Son's Photo in Tucson. Washington Wants to Cut the Program That Might Have Saved Him.

You Don't Get a Vote on Whether Someone Is Telling the Truth About Their Own Drinking

Craving Isn't Just Wanting. Sometimes It's Your Own Memory Ambushing You.

A New Trial Finally Tested Therapy for People Who Drink to Cope

Overdose Deaths Are Falling. The Craving Didn't Get the Memo.

Fentanyl Gets a Test Strip. Meth Gets Called 'Excited Delirium' and a Cell.

Filter Shut Down This Week. Believe People Who Use Drugs Anyway.

Wanting Outlives Liking, and That's Why Relapse Isn't a Moral Failure

A Premium Hike Is a Relapse Trigger, Not a Billing Problem

Relapse Isn't the Opposite of Recovery. Shame Is.

The Only Credential That Can't Be Taught in School Is Finally Being Treated Like One

The Hardest Part of Getting Sober Isn't Staying Sober. It's Figuring Out Who You Are Without It.

Recovery Community Centers Run on Peer Leaders. Rural America Can't Keep Them in the Building.

Your Craving Isn't Weak Willpower. Yale Just Showed It's Rewiring How You Decide, in Real Time.

Inside a Tennessee Prison, People Are Rebuilding the Thing Addiction and Incarceration Both Took From Them

The Drug Being Fast-Tracked as a Depression Cure Is Quietly Costing Some People Their Bladders — and No One in the System Saw It Coming

Cocaine Got $300 More Expensive an Ounce. Nobody's Demand Went Anywhere — It Went Shopping.

Peer Support Workers Are Recovery's Best Technology. Their Employers Still Manage Them Like a Risk.