Addiction Recovery Apps

Added: 24 November 2015

Olivia Lanculescu of Castle Craig Hospital, an alcohol & drug rehab clinic has pulled together an useful, up-to-date list of the most popular apps used for addiction recovery some of which we have included below.

1. Twelve Steps – The Companion consists of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous; daily meditations; a sobriety calculator, reminding the user how much time they have been abstinent; as well as an AA Meeting Finder with quick access to Maps. (Android & iPhone)

1. An alternative is the One Day at a Time app, which also provides The Big Book along with daily meditations, an abstinence tracking system and access to helpful phone numbers. (Android & iPhone)

1. Hazelden, a world-renowned American rehab clinic, recently won the White House Behavioral Health Patient Empowerment Challenge award for its Mobile app: MORE “Field Guide to Life”. This new app is part of MORE (My Ongoing Recovery Experience), a web-based program of personalised continuing care provided by Hazelden to its former patients. The app guides users through the stages of early recovery for a year. (Android & iPhone)

1. The A.A. Speakers app holds a collection of over 300 audio recordings of people speaking at AA meetings (Android & iPhone); people in drug addiction recovery who prefer audio material can get a separate app to listen to over 300 speakers at NA conventions. (Android & iPhone)

1. Afternoon Affirmations sends users inspirational quotes, photos or videos every day at 1 pm. It is aimed at people suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, prescription drug addiction, gambling addiction or eating disorders. (iPhone only)

1. The Mindfulness Meditation app encourages users to take a break, set a meditation time and start relaxing. Mindfulness is known to be helpful in recovery by helping people de-stress. (Android & iPhone)

1. CleanTime Counter keeps track of the user’s sobriety by calculating the time that has elapsed since a starting date. (Android only)

1. My Sober Life is specifically aimed at young people (ages 12 to 25) it provides such features as: a sober counter; daily guidance with inspiring thoughts; a photo uploader to be reminded of the person’s motivations in recovery; tracker of obstacles (triggers, stress, anger, etc); relapse prevention tool; AA, NA, Al-Anon meeting finder; addiction news and more. (Android & iPhone)

1. The recoveryBox app uses a light system to keep track of the user’s daily activities. These are put into categories to mark their helpfulness: green light for beneficial activities, yellow light for potentially harmful behaviour and red light for “acting out” or dangerous activities. It also has an email/text service to keep the person connected with their sponsor or counsellor. An interesting thing is that this particular app supports from conventional to less-mainstream dependencies, like addiction to caffeine, exercise, social media, shopping, perfectionism, etc. (iPhone only)

1. Sober Grid is a social networking app that gives access to a global recovery community. Its geosocial searching features allows users to find other sober people locally and around the world. Users can choose to remain anonymous, while being able to message other users, share content, answer questions and provide help. If a user is in need, they can select the “Burning Desire” button  which highlights their profile in red, showing others they are going through a hard time and need support. (Android & iPhone)

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