Recovery tools on an iPhone app? I was so taken with Holly Hess’s story of her codependency recovery journey and her husband’s addiction recovery journey and how she took their experiences and merged them with her professional IT talents to recreate a tool box of recovery in an iPhone app, that I invited her to share her story. But first, a bit about Holly:

Recovery tools in an iPhone app – help for the co-dependent and the addict/alcoholic.

Holly Hess is a stay at home mom who once lived in the corporate world as a programmer.  Recently she returned to programming as part of her recovery journey for CoDependency. She continues to work on recoveryBox adding new features that users request as well as blogging about addiction recovery and can be contacted at support@recoveryBoxApp.com 

Recovery Tools in an iPhone app – the Story of RecoveryBox by Holly Hess

There are so many things in life that create screens from which we can hide behind our problems.  But eventually, our problems will find us.  And we will have to deal with them. And our families and friends will have to deal with them. But sometimes, from those problems we emerge as the victor and it births something. This is the story of recoveryBox, the app created for the iPhone for those in recovery for an addiction.

About a year and a half ago, a dear friend admitted to having an addiction. He had been struggling with it for over 30 years, and I never knew – no one ever knew.  No I’m not that type of clueless person, but he was just that good at hiding it. My dear friend is my husband.

We have our struggles like everyone else, but ours is a tad on the challenging side.  We have a son with autism, and we both struggle with the day-to-day management of him.  I turned to coping with it by giving up my career as a programmer to take care of him and all his needs, and my husband lived in his world as a network engineer.  Don’t get me wrong, we love each other dearly, but the stress took it’s toll, and we each needed to deal somehow. I just disconnected from reality, and he went deeper into his addiction.

At the initial confession, my husband told me he kicked the “habit,” as he called it, but as life got harder with our son he returned to it.  He really downplayed the addiction and said he could “lick” this on his own and didn’t need help. Meanwhile I was just stuck.  I mean, I felt my world was upside down, and I just couldn’t breath let alone talk to him because, “I was making a big deal out of it.”

Then, only a few months after the initial confession, he asked me to take him to the doctor. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know just how bad. He told me he relapsed and started into the abyss of addiction. When I took him to the hospital for all his physical symptoms, they asked him if he wanted to commit suicide. He said yes. And so he was committed for a week.

How do you take that? I mean my husband just said he wanted to commit suicide. What do I tell the kids who were so young? How do I answer why daddy went to the hospital and didn’t come home? How do I tell them that daddy is not strong enough to deal with life. During that nightmare of a week, I went to the hospital every night for a 30 minute visit. I just couldn’t believe what I saw. Here was my strong, talented husband who knew God but yet was visibly beaten down. I learned then that was what hitting rock bottom was all about.

We made it past that week and he came home.  Albeit not himself at all.  And while he was in the psych ward, I began calling around for counseling places. See, here is the thing. Where we live, there really are NOT that many places around that have counseling for his type of addiction.  Tons for alcohol and drugs.  Society just doesn’t see view all addictions as equal.

Eventually we found a place that was based on Christian principles, the concept of accountability to others in the group as well as counseling.  And this is where the story of recoveryBox began. I noticed that besides the “homework” he had for counseling, he had to track his daily activities, and they called these “lights”.

Green lights were good life habit activities, such as eating, taking meds, attending counseling, doing homework, following a program, etc.  These were all things that he needed to make the new priority.  At first he only had a few green lights, but as he got stronger, the number of green lights grew, which was rewarding to him.

The yellow lights are not necessarily acting out.  These lights are warnings for when you put yourself with a person, at a place or have an object in possession that could lead you back to relapse.  Red lights were complete relapse items.  Yellow and red lights had to be discussed during group sessions where the others keep you accountable.  Each night he also had to text a partner those numbers as well as trigger stress levels.

I was amazed at how much work he was putting into this.  But, I also knew that when he returned to work it would not be as easy to continue tracking all that “stuff.”  And being the person who just wants to solve everyone’s problems, I created a spreadsheet for him that he had on his phone so it would be with him at all times – and it worked well.  The others in his group therapy also wanted the spreadsheet.  They wanted to see how their lives were doing, and it was a great way to actually see via the numbers how their recovery was improving.

Meanwhile I tried attending the wives group but found this one not for me.  I found a Celebrate Recovery group where I found myself working a lot of the same items that my husband was, but for codependency.  Goodness, how did we get here? You mean always wanting to solve others problems at my expense is not healthy? Until I went to counseling, I never realized that I was codependent.

During these months I needed something to take my mind off of everything.  I needed emotional breaks during the day because I knew if I didn’t I would literally collapse.  I didn’t have a “job” to go to because remember I gave mine up to take care of my family. And so I returned to programming by learning how to make apps for the iPhone. Programming was something that I was good at in the past and was the complete break from emotions as it uses the opposite side of the brain (or at least that’s what my counselor told me).

I learned more about iPhone development and learned more about recovery, I knew what my first project would be.  I would create something to track all of this “lights” data for us.  The thing is, even though the topic was so close at heart, it felt like my way of helping him (and me too).  I couldn’t do the actual recovery work for him, but I could create a tool that would make it easier for him and would help with being compliant.

The first version of recoveryBox was created, and he tested it for a week…and loved it. Like the spreadsheet I had originally created, the others in his group immediately asked for the app.  It was so rudimentary at first but with the help of these new testers, it began to get refined.  Based on their suggestions other items were added besides just tracking lights.

Requests came for adding triggers, the texting/emailing, reminders notices, tracking of sobriety date, creating treatment goals, being able to follow a 12 step program, being able to journal, and I thought it would be nice to be rewarded at milestones with accomplishments.  What a surprise to the people in group when someone earned their first badge for entering lights, or being sober for certain durations, or completing treatment goals and other.

The current version of recoveryBox in the Apple App Store allows a user to tweet or post those accomplishments on Twitter of Facebook to be encouraged by others.  And recently I added the ability to even Tweet or Post one’s Sobriety milestones.

I’m glad to report now that the good habits have become part of everyday life that he no longer has to enter his lights to stay on track.  Nor I.  recoveryBox allowed us to be accountable to a sponsor daily, follow a twelve step program, journal throughout the steps, track triggers,  create and track treatment goals, watch our Sobriety date and have everything all in app.

I am a firm believer in life that there are no coincidences.  God used my skills as a programmer to create recoveryBox to help heal us as well as others. For more information about the app, please visit www.recoveryboxapp.com. And if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at support@recoveryBoxApp.com.

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