Think You Don’t Relate to Addiction? Read this:
Originally published at The Rumpus, Voices on Addiction now lives here—with its mission intact and its reach expanded. The next essay drops in September for National Recovery Month.
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I’m a mess.
Nothing is normal.
Not just the world. Not just the shit show that is Trump and Project 2025.
I’ve lost my mother, father, and brother in less than four years, punctuated by almost losing my twelve-year-old grandson to cardiac arrest the day after open heart surgery to correct a birth anomaly. It took twelve minutes to revive him, and even then, we came so close to losing him. It wasn’t until the cardiac surgeon reopened his chest, lifted his heart into his hands, held it, massaged it — that RayRay took a breath.
He will never be the same.
Nor will I.
That’s just me.
Everywhere around me people are suffering.
Throw in family estrangement, the polarization of we the people, climate collapse, children left at summer camp and drowned, a failure of Texas to respond in time to save their lives. Throw in constant scenes of children being purposefully starved in Gaza, and our brown neighbors being swept up —randomly, violently— by ICE here on our American streets, and…
I get it. I’m not alone. You’re all here with me. And that’s what matters.
I will keep showing up as long as you do.
The thing is: there’s nothing wrong with us except we were sold a bill of goods and now we’re waking up. Waking up to the truth that there’s nothing wrong with us (and there never was) and it’s time we stood up and took back our autonomy, our hearts, our souls, and it’s time we quit pointing fingers and finding problems out there because we hate ourselves so much we need a scapegoat to blame — need an OTHER — when in reality, THERE IS NO OTHER.
We’re it. And the lie of original sin has almost destroyed us. That first finger pointed at Eve. That first finger saying, “it was her, it was them, it was anyone but me” out of shame for the lie of nakedness. Who told you you were naked?
Who told you you needed to hide? Hint: it was never 1God.
Come out, come out wherever you are
and meet your true nature: you fell from a star.
It’s been a year since I started writing here. I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew the title had to be There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was) because it was that realization that changed everything for me.
It underpins everything I write and live. It’s not just an idea. It’s a way of life. Sometimes I think it’s what they mean by enlightenment and - like true enlightenment - it’s so ordinary. Once you realize it, you can never go back to the self-loathing, the false self organized around survival, the ego’s constant striving and beration, and - if it truly lands - when it shatters the false system that created a false self - you can never see anyone else as less than whole either. It’s like having Superwoman’s X-Ray vision - you see past the survival persona even if they don’t. You see their wholeness as intact as yours - you see how everything is connected. You are part of all that is and all that is is part of you.
When I kicked off my Substack newsletter last summer, it was mostly because
accepted an essay for and mentioned linking it to my own newsletter. I’d registered one months earlier but hadn’t touched it—I couldn’t figure it out. I just read other people’s: Sari’s, , , , …But Sari’s comment sparked something. Lit a fuse. I thought: okay. I’ll figure this out. And then — magic.I’ve gained 4479 readers since then.
The timing was perfect because Substack found me in a moment in which I was no longer willing to translate my story into someone else’s language. I was ready to claim it.
I’d spent an entire lifetime getting to that moment, working this land—not land you can find on a map, but the geography of my life. I cleared it. I tended it. I named it. I invented a language to describe it. I’m still naming and inventing it. (And I’ll be damned if I’ll let AI plant a stake in it.)
Through that labor, a poetics emerged—my poetics.
Not borrowed. Not inherited. Invented.
I write from the territory of truth-telling and pattern-breaking—working at the intersections of psychological depth, spiritual integrity, and generational trauma. This kind of writing doesn’t always land easily. It touches collective nerves. It disturbs inherited scripts. It invites misunderstanding, projection, resistance.
But it’s what I’m here to do.
This is authorship.
This is my land.
This space has grown. People have shown up thoughtfully, fiercely, with intelligence and heart. Some of you came with me from past chapters. Some found your way here through a single essay and stayed. You’ve read deeply. You’ve written back. You’ve helped shape what this is becoming.
This note from
captures it perfectly:This morning, I finally subscribed to Kelly Thompson TNWWY’s beautifully inviting Substack, to which she replied, “Let me just say I’m so glad you came as you are and decided to stay - that you took my hand. Imma hold on tight. WE got this.”
WE got this. How powerful is that? This is a beautiful community inviting us to link arms and run through a field of wildflowers together. Join in. Grab someone’s hand. Send out your own invitations, seek out people who make you happy and accept all the invitations you receive (they won’t be formal letters, so trust the warm feeling in your gut and your heart and just follow it).
You ARE invited. You belong. We got this. Your support doesn’t just keep There’s Nothing Wrong With You (TNWWY) going. It helps fund other voices, makes it possible to do this kind of original work. The kind that asks everything of us.
And today, I’m bringing something else home.
In May 2020, I received an email from
Burke that gutted me.She’d written months earlier to ask about sharing her story—a personal essay about sibling addiction. Then her brother died—and this arrived in my inbox:
Hey Kelly - I told you I was going to submit to you…I just didn’t know my brother would be gone…this is about how much it sucks to lose a sibling to addiction during COVID because it’s like: COVID. Star of the show.
Thank you for your consideration.
This is why Voices on Addiction exists.
To hold this:
From Primary Source by
Burke:My brother, a forty-three-year-old attorney and father of five, died last night, of an assumed overdose. To call him a statistic sounds cruel. Statistic evokes a tally on a whiteboard. One-two-three-four-slash. Easily counted; easily erased. My friend Margaret lost her brother to opiate addiction a few weeks ago, too.
I am not ashamed of my brother. He died in an era of ignored victims. It is fitting. To recall his sudden death reminds me of, at the time of I am writing, the over 435,000 COVID-19 deaths worldwide. The bus driver who recorded a coughing passenger, and begged our nation to stay at home, only to die two weeks later. The elderly in nursing homes, dying behind the glass that separates them from their loved ones. The economy more important than lives. Pharmaceutical sales and bonuses more important than my brother’s life, and the lives of those like him. My brother was never jailed for illegal possession or use of drugs; he was not shot down in the street by police for the color of his skin. My brother is dead, and the world is burning, and I feel guilty for grieving.
Jennie was part of a community, a family of readers and writers impacted by addiction across the spectrum, who often found each other for the first time through Voices on Addiction at The Rumpus. Some wrote publicly about it for the first time there. Others simply read, even lurked, and felt less alone.
Jennie did both. She submitted her essay just after losing her brother, but long before that, she was a devoted reader. A fan. She understood what this column held. What it made possible.
Voices on Addiction launched in 2016, right as the sober influencer movement was beginning to reshape recovery culture—introducing personal storytelling, online presence, and alternative paradigms of sobriety to wider audiences.
What set Voices on Addiction apart was this: it lived inside a mainstream literary magazine.
Not a niche recovery site. Not a branded wellness space.
Just literature—where recovery stories ran alongside fiction, essays, and political commentary. And that visibility mattered.
The Rumpus, known for amplifying voices that don’t fit the mold, gave Voices on Addiction a place in its core editorial lineup of columns. That placement meant readers who might never have gone looking for addiction stories came across them by accident—or grace—and recognized themselves.
Or someone they loved.
They realized: this is about all of us.
And Voices on Addiction helped make that realization possible by publishing the kinds of stories that dismantled stigma and widened the circle. Until it was big enough to hold all of us.
Because we’re all in recovery from something.
Stories like Jennie’s helped others feel seen. But so did the way she showed up for other people’s stories. The way she lit up when truth hit. And Jennie is just one of so many in the VOA community who read the column and lifted each other’s voices.
That’s what she meant when she posted this after reading
’s unforgettable essay None of This is Bullshit:
And that’s the kind of space Voices on Addiction will continue to hold.
After a nine-year run at The Rumpus, the column has found a new home at There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was).
Voices on Addiction continues in its original spirit—true personal narratives of addiction, told by people across the spectrum of experience. Voices on Addiction has always told the full story—not just from those who’ve struggled with addiction directly, but from anyone impacted by it. And that’s all of us, in one way or another.
Recently, writer shared her powerful essay, The Shape of Memory in the column’s final months at The Rumpus. Her words capture exactly why this work matters:
This essay is for the kids who never knew their childhood wasn’t normal until someone else said so. For the ones who loved their parent with their whole heart, even when their addiction kept breaking it.
This is the kind of truth-telling the column has always been about—stories that help us untangle love from survival, that honor the complexity of family, grief, and addiction.
At the root of addiction is the belief that there’s something wrong with us. Addiction impacts us all. And silence has never helped anyone heal.
When the column began in 2016, we were still speaking into a void. Since then, we’ve come a long way in breaking the stigma. Recovery is now part of the mainstream conversation. Nine years ago, it wasn’t.
I began my recovery journey in 1984—long before sobriety was a lifestyle, and decades before anyone had heard the term ‘sober curious.’ I came out of the addiction closet in 2010. I started recovering out loud when it was taboo, when people thought anonymity meant secrecy—it doesn’t. It means having the humility to be fully human. To be one among many. To make whole. No more compartmentalizing. No more false binaries like secular/spiritual, personal/professional, private/public—because when we’re whole, boundaries aren’t something we enforce. They’re something we embody.
Voices on Addiction at TNWWY will publish on a rolling basis—when the right story arrives, we’ll share it. Each piece will be given the space and care it deserves. Whether you’re just beginning to question, or have been on this road for decades: your story matters. Your voice matters. We matter. Welcome home.
⚠️Note: Submission guidelines have been updated since this post was first published.
We’re looking for true personal narratives of addiction in all its forms; essays from anyone impacted—not just those in recovery; stories that challenge myths and break stigma; work that reveals the complexity of healing and the multiplicity of truths; and submissions that insist recovery is as layered, unruly, and alive as the lives we’ve lived.
With each featured essay, I’ll include links to previously published work. Reading those will give you a feel for what we’re looking for.
Submissions Guidelines
Word Count: 1,500–3,000 words.
Shorter pieces (closer to 1,500–2,000) are often more likely to be considered, but longer essays up to 3,000 will be read with care. What matters most is depth, honesty, and craft—not length for its own sake.
Rolling Basis: We publish throughout the year, not on a fixed schedule. That means there’s no artificial rush to get in by a deadline. Your story will be considered in its own right, not against a pile of simultaneous submissions.
Exclusivity / Rights: If your essay is accepted, we ask for exclusive first publication rights for 90 days. After that, all rights revert to you. If you republish elsewhere, please include first publication credit to Voices on Addiction with a link back.
Previously Published Work: We strongly prefer original, unpublished essays. However, if your piece has appeared only on your personal Substack (and not in another magazine, journal, or anthology), we may consider it for Voices on Addiction. If accepted, we ask that you temporarily remove it from public view on your Substack during the 90-day exclusivity period.
Payment: Our goal is to pay writers. Once this publication reaches 100 paid subscribers, contributors will receive $100 per published essay. Until then, VOA is volunteer-only—your stories are what keep this column alive, and growing paid subscriptions is what will allow us to sustain it and honor your work financially.
Response Time: I do my best to respond in a timely way, but I won’t lie: it sometimes takes me longer than I’d like. I don’t like rejecting work, and I take submissions seriously. Thank you for your patience and trust.
AI Policy: This space is for human voices and lived experience. Work generated or assisted by AI will not be considered. Recovery, in all its forms, is about truth-telling—and we hold that line here.
Format:
• Attach your essay as a .doc or .docx
• Double-spaced, 12-point font
• Include a 100-word bio and a brief abstract (2–3 sentences describing the piece)
What We’re Looking For:
Creative nonfiction, personal narratives, and hybrid forms rooted in recovery and reclamation. Your story, in your words.
👉 Submit via email: thompsonk@substack.com
We read every submission with care and respect for the vulnerability it takes to tell the truth.
If you’ve been here a while—thank you. Let’s keep going.
If you believe in this work, consider becoming a paid subscriber—$5/month or $30/year.
Your support helps fund Voices on Addiction at There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was). It helps us get these stories out—and pay the people telling the truths that just might free us all.
Once we reach the goal of 100 paid subscribers, Voices on Addiction at TNWWY will begin paying $100 to each contributor.
That’s the hope: Real voices, Real impact, Real support.
Thank you
for inspiring the WILDest t-shirt on earth. ❤️🔥Read Substack Bestseller
’s Voices On Addiction essay here: Incorrigible: A Love Story. This is the kind of story every editor dreams of finding in their inbox.And here’s one skater kid’s unstoppable comeback—because this is how I see every one of us impacted by addiction, whether in ourselves or someone we love.
She falls hard. No one helps her up. She gets back in the race anyway. And wins.
It reminded me of my own fall. I relapsed at 24 years sober. (I’ve been back and sober fifteen years now.) No crowd. No medals. No one rushing in. Just me, scraping myself off the floor.
No one can do it for us. But we still do it together.
That’s recovery.
And it’s not a race.
On Repeat:
With broken dreams and nothing more
I heard a woman singing her song
And it was good
It was warm and strong
Oh oh oh
She makes me cry, I don’t know why
One Thing: Earthing
Every morning, Tinder and I ground. She stretches out on the grass. I plant my bare feet in it. You can buy indoor earthing gear, but that doesn’t do it for me. I need the actual earth. I’m known to hug trees. Nothing brings more comfort right now. Not sure what I’ll do when the snow comes!
Shout outs:
When a book speaks to me - and I read voraciously and continuously - it is like meeting a new love interest, friend, or soul mate and All the Way to the River is calling:
The cover - for one thing - and then hearing Liz quote the love of her life, “Don’t be afraid of the truth, babe.” That’s the spirit she tapped into to write the book. I’m in. As someone who does interviews of women authors I will reach out to see if
would be willing to come on a Voices on Addiction @TNWWY live stream with me to talk about All the Way to the River which drops September 9, 2025. This is too weird because my original sobriety date was 9-9-1984.If you’re not familiar with my interviews, check out my live stream with
about her book Nightbird here, and read one of my favorite print interviews (they’re all my favorite because I don’t do them unless they call my soul) with about her (it turns out) prophetic Book of Joan who I interviewed for The Rumpus here.Catch up:
There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was) ™
“There’s Nothing Wrong With You (And There Never Was),” is a phrase I coined to name the truth of our untouchable wholeness. Recovery (from anything).
What If There’s Nothing Wrong With Us (And There Never Was)?
I don’t really have an essay today, but I wanted to share some thoughts.
TNWWY exists to advocate for the recognition and full access to the original wholeness that is our birthright, no matter what we have faced.
This space is here to deconstruct everything that stands in the way.
Throw a dollar in the basket to support VOA on TNWWY
Press the ❤️🔥 if you liked this because likes help spread the word.
I love how you use your voice online- unapologetically. ~
God as you understand God —by whatever name or whatever you call the mystery.
You published an essay of mine in Rumpus, and the next day, I think, it appeared on a site called "Memoir Monday." I was shocked because my piece was placed "above" that of a very famous writer. But of course as a self-defeating in some ways recovering woman, I shrugged and didn't really take in the honor. On to the next writing day, right? However, I subscribed to Memoir Monday and the rest is history. I figured out what Substack was, sorta, and migrated my long-time blog over. I set myself the goal of reposting one essay or story a week - stuff already published so sorta peer-reviewed. I'm so glad you're going to publish Voices here, Kelly!
Kelly, this is wonderful, I am happy for you! And thank you as always always always for the shoutout. I will share this news of VOA on Substack in Writing in the Dark and notes, etc. XOXOXO