About Haven

I was the one using. My family was the one waiting.

I have been sober seventeen years, since August 24, 2009. I promised the people who loved me I was done more times than I can count. When I finally got honest, I could see what those years had done to them. Nothing was built for them. Everything was built for me.

The parents, the partners, the adult children, the friends. They do some of the hardest emotional work this disease asks of anyone, and mostly they do it alone, at 2am, with a search bar. Haven is the place I wish they had had. Calm. Private. Grounded in what actually helps.

I am not a doctor, a counselor, or a therapist. I am the person who did the lying, the asking for money, the going silent, and the getting sober, and I write from that side of it.

Joshua BlairFounder of Haven. Sober since 2009.

Every answer in the Answers library is written by me, from the inside of one addiction and one recovery. They are lived experience, not medical advice, and each one says so at the top. My story is not a formula, and where an answer could be read as a promise about someone else's recovery, I put a fence around it on purpose.

Before anything is published it goes through a safety review. The crisis numbers are checked. Anything that belongs to a doctor stays with a doctor. Anything that could land badly on someone who has lost their person is read again with that reader in mind. This is an editorial review, not a clinical one, and I do not claim otherwise.

Each answer shows the date it was published and the date it was last changed. If something on this site is wrong, email me and I will fix it.