Our Story
Why I built Switchback
I'm not a clinician, a guru, or a success story. I'm a human, just like millions of others who have been pulled into the depths of addiction and are working indefinitely to keep ourselves out.
When I started to feel like I was really understanding recovery, I noticed anxiety creeping in. At first I didn't know why. Eventually it became clear: I was afraid I would forget the skillset I had built to keep myself clean.
Because as addicts, we forget. We forget how bad it was. We forget that addiction is always working — quietly, patiently — to pull us back.
Switchback started as a daily reflection engine — I called it Project Dharma — that rotated through 30 recovery topics to keep myself grounded each day. It worked better than I expected. So I started thinking about sharing it.
While building it into something others could use, I remembered something important: we are all in recovery, but every recovery is different. So I added tools that let people build their own plan — not just reflections, but crisis mode, gratitude, intentions, and affirmations. A dashboard for the work, shaped to fit the person doing it.
Later, as I read more about the role of community in long-term recovery, two more tools came into focus: Meeting Companion and Circle — built to keep the people who carry us, close.
The risk of returning to old patterns doesn't disappear. It just gets quieter. Switchback is built for the long arc — from the first weeks when everything is loud, to the years later when the danger is forgetting how loud it once was. It exists to interrupt the pattern in the moment, and to reinforce recovery in the moments between.
Switchback is the bridge between what you learn in early recovery and the years that follow.
A personalized plan you can reach for in the hardest moments, and tools that keep the work alive in the ones that aren't.
Now, I use Switchback every day — at minimum to check the reflection, and on the harder days, when an old association surfaces or the noise gets loud, I reach for crisis mode. It still helps.
Switchback won't do the work for you. Nothing can. But my hope is that it changes lives by giving us the small nudge we sometimes need to stay clean.