What it’s really like on recovery TikTok

Lies to family and friends, memory loss, seven-day benders. These are the sort of confessions that used to be confined to NA and AA meetings, or the private four walls of rehab centres. That’s until TikTok made recovery go public. Creators in addiction recovery are gaining popularity, but it’s a totally different world to offline community hubs. No one will offer you a slightly stale digestive biscuit — or more importantly a ‘big hug’ — when you bare your soul into the online ether. Healing online, on the other hand, may be empowering, but with algorithms and a following to contend with, is it actually a safe space to share?

#Sobertok has over 300,000 posts. Videos mainly consist of creators sharing raw anecdotes from the darkest moments of addiction and discussing what life is like now, in recovery. It’s content that has a clear point of interest — nearly half of UK adults have either experienced or know someone who has lived with addiction. For actor Issy Hawkins, posting on TikTok about alcohol addiction was about representation. She went to rehab aged twenty-one, after her morning drinking habit resulted in losing her job in advertising. Now, she has 140,000 followers and is nominated for a National Diversity Award under the ‘positive role model’ category. “If I had seen a young woman on the internet saying she’d been drinking in the morning,” she explains, “I’d have realised I’m not the only person. Then we can take the shame out of it, and ask for help.”

As well as age, jobs also don’t always match the stereotype. BBC news journalist Tamsin Selbie launched her TikTok profile, SoberJourno, back in March. Her posts have already amassed over 200,000 views, offering tips on what it’s like to be in early recovery and warning signs of alcohol addiction, even if they’re not the ‘typical’ ones (Selbie kept a solid job, relationship and home while in addiction). “I stayed out of recovery for a long time because I didn’t fit into the mold that I’d seen other people fit into,” she says. If she’d seen someone like herself online while in active addiction, it would have validated that she had a problem. “It would’ve made a huge impression on me,” she says, “seeing that you can be high functioning, have a high-pressure job and still be drinking every day.”

The humanisation of alcoholism on TikTok can actually be beneficial. “It’s showing that people who experience addiction are real people,” Catherine Talbot, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Bournemouth, says. “When you see that these are just people going through experiences, it humanises it. It may inspire other people to recognise they have a problem and seek help.” 

But representation often comes at the cost of sharing vulnerable stories online. Hawkins has embraced this in her content, candidly speaking about the depressing and humiliating moments from addiction. In one video, she talks about discovering, aged fifteen, that she could acceptably morning drink by having Bailey’s at Christmas time. In another, she describes getting picked up by the British Transport police for drunkenly falling down a flight of stairs at Oxford Circus. But, for her, it’s to “get people to relate”, as well as a form of healing. “It’s really therapeutic for me,” she says. “I was lucky that in drama school, you use a lot of your own experience anyway, so I’m comfortable talking about my stuff. I’m not embarrassed by any of it.” 

These tales from addiction are something that are sometimes called “war stories” within the community. And for Luke Trainor, a trainee psychoanalyst who set up a student recovery program at the University of Birmingham, they’re something that are sometimes better kept to the privacy of NA or AA. “There’s lots of good ways of talking about your recovery without having to lead with, I was crying into a bag of ket,” he says. “You don’t have to go there.” For Trainor, the risk is oversharing and information coming to bite back in the future. “We don’t think about the children we may have and their access to the most salacious bits of our lives, or future partners and their families.”

It’s something Musician Kira Inez Riess (known by her stage name YNES) also worries about. From wheeling a suitcase around east London for an entire night to keep the party going, to drinking toilet water due to intense dehydration, Riess hasn’t shied away from exposing the most desolate parts of addiction. “I absolutely worry about watching this content later down the line,” she says. “I think about who might watch it or potential job opportunities — what if this comes up?”

There’s also the pressure to keep posting emotionally-charged content because it performs better in TikTok’s algorithm. Riess notices that more positive content, like her Sober Joys series, doesn’t do as well as her more confessional videos, because “TikTok loves drama”. Hawkins has struggled with this too. “I’m not interested in millions of views,” she says, “but why is it that doom content flies and then something that’s positive isn’t shown to the community that’s been built?” 

Since TikTok’s short-form content and highly engaging For You Page tap into the brain’s reward system and release dopamine — the feel-good neurotransmitter — another danger for creators, Trainor argues, is “ego inflation”. “It could create a defective feedback loop when it comes to gratification and affirmation”, he says. It also goes against the belief in AA and NA groups that recovery requires surrendering self-centred behaviours that have enabled continued substance use. And that’s why Hawkins waited eight years into her recovery to post on TikTok. “The feedback, if positive, would have made my ego blow up,” she says. “I don’t think I had enough humility then. If I’d done social media early on, I probably would have relapsed. People don’t realise how delicate early recovery is, and how little things can all mount up to big things. It’s all ego, ego, ego, and then you’re thinking, I’m that girl off TikTok — I can have a drink.”

The addictive nature of TikTok is also a problem in itself for creators. Hawkins has recently paused on posting, partly due to the app’s all-consuming nature. “Obsession is something I have to stay on top of and that’s why I’ve taken a break from TikTok,” she says. “In the moment it can feel good and then I’m in burnout because of all the overprocessing and overstimulation.” 

But TikTok’s algorithm is also famed for its ability to build community. TikTok itself states that its For You Page is “powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest”. And the community is what volunteer worker Noah King — whose top video has over 850,000 views — attributes to his successful recovery so far, after three years struggling trying to get clean. “It was through [fellow creator, Feral girl in retirement’s] videos that I ended up getting sober,” he says. “I tried loads of different things, including AA meetings, but knowing that other people suffer the same way as you, it’s a lot easier to open up.” 

For some people in recovery, TikTok has replaced more traditional help methods, like AA, completely. Right now, King is only engaging with the TikTok recovery community for support. “If you’re quite shy and anxious, it’s easier to communicate with someone on the internet and talk about it,” he says. Riess also isn’t involved in any offline recovery programs. She claims she would have found recovery “immensely difficult” without an “online support system”. “The biggest things that alcohol masks for me are social awkwardness, social anxiety and self-hatred,” she says. “The concept of having to go somewhere in-person was inaccessible to me.” 

It’s important to recognise, though, that TikTok isn’t therapy. “It’s not a standalone intervention in itself,” Talbot says. “You haven’t got a professional there who can step in and provide appropriate support.” As someone who only posted on TikTok later in her recovery after rehab and therapy, Hawkins recognises the community benefits of TikTok, but says offline support was essential for her. “I see on my social media the community that it’s creating for people,” she says, “but for me, I do need in-person stuff. That’s what feeds my soul — human interaction.” 

In a world increasingly centred around social media, AI and other technology, being entirely defined by an online persona is also a risk that creators face. For recovery TikTokers in particular, it’s one that can be particularly harmful. “Recovery can become a brand, in and of itself”, Talbot says. “While that can be valuable during certain stages, it’s really important to have aspects of identity beyond a diagnosis.” Sharing online isn’t inherently bad, then, but it should come with caution. Hawkins, a decade into recovery and two years into sharing on TikTok, offers a reminder that resists the fast pace of the platform: “There’s no rush. Have this time to truly get to know yourself, because it’s going to be a massive journey.”