Welcome to the Deconstructing Addiction League
The Deconstructing Addiction League is an experimental, peer-led community project exploring new ways of responding to substance use dilemmas.
Our approach is inspired by Narrative Therapy and Community Work. Rather than seeing people as broken, deficient, or defined by a diagnosis, we begin with a different idea:
The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem.
We bring this philosophy to life in two ways. Our peer-led therapeutic groups help people directly with the challenges of changing their relationship to alcohol and other drugs. Our social events create opportunities for connection, pleasure, and belonging without substances at the center.
Together, these activities offer both individual and social responses to substance use dilemmas.
We are interested in the many ways people become caught in difficult relationships with alcohol and other drugs. We understand these relationships as being shaped not only by our biology and psychology, but also by culture, economics, isolation, belonging, pleasure, and the social worlds we inhabit.
Many conversations about addiction focus primarily on what is wrong with the individual.
We are interested in a different set of questions.
Instead of asking:
What is wrong with you?
We ask:
What conditions made this relationship with substances possible?
We look beyond biology and personal responsibility alone to examine larger influences:
Drinking and drug culture
Consumer culture
Isolation and disconnection
Poverty and social inequality
Community and belonging
Meaning, pleasure, and purpose
We don't believe people need to understand their substance use as a disease or define themselves as addicts or alcoholics in order to change their lives. We offer another way of thinking about these difficulties, not as a correction of what others believe, but as an invitation to explore different possibilities.
The Deconstructing Addiction League is a place for people who want to think differently about substance use, identity, connection, and change.
A DIFFERENT QUESTION
Most approaches to addiction ask:
How do we get people to stop using substances?
We are interested in another question:
How do people build lives that are rich enough that substances become less necessary?
How do people create friendship, connection, hospitality, celebration, excitement, adventure, and meaning without alcohol and other drugs at the center?
How do we learn to have a blast together without relying on substances as the primary social lubricant?
These questions sit at the heart of the Deconstructing Addiction League.
OUR THERAPEUTIC GROUPS
Our social events respond to substance use dilemmas indirectly, by creating alternatives to the culture of consumption. Our therapeutic groups address these dilemmas directly.
Through collaborative conversations inspired by Narrative Therapy and Community Work, we help people navigate cravings, isolation, despair, and the practical challenges of changing their relationships with substances.
Together, we explore new skills for living, new possibilities for connection, and what a substance-free life might look like for each of us.
Our groups are peer-led and organized around the practice of abstinence.
THE NEW PARTY
We believe that whenever people gather to connect, celebrate, play, and enjoy each other's company without alcohol or drugs at the center, they are already deconstructing addiction.
This may sound simple, but it challenges some deeply rooted cultural assumptions.
Many of us have inherited the idea that alcohol is what makes parties fun, that drinking creates connection, and that substances are necessary for hospitality and belonging.
But what if these capacities already exist within us?
What if fun, camaraderie, and joy can be cultivated deliberately?
What if we can become skilled at creating atmospheres where people feel welcome, alive, playful, and connected?
This is the experiment.
FUN IS NOT FRIVOLOUS
Many people know how to stop using substances.
Far fewer know how to build a life that feels genuinely enjoyable without them.
We take fun seriously.
Play, laughter, friendship, adventure, hospitality, and meaningful social connection are not luxuries. They are essential ingredients in a life worth participating in.
Isolation, boredom, and disconnection often intensify the desire to use substances.
Connection can loosen their grip.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Changing our relationships with substances involves more than changing how much we consume.
It also involves changing how we live.
Many of us need additional ways to live well.
We need friendship.
We need purpose.
We need pleasure.
We need good stories about who we are becoming.
We need communities worth belonging to.
The Deconstructing Addiction League exists to help create those possibilities.
AN INVITATION
The Deconstructing Addiction League is not a finished program.
It is an evolving social experiment.
We are learning how to create new forms of connection, new forms of hospitality, and perhaps even a new kind of party, one that doesn't leave people isolated, broke, hungover, or disconnected from their lives.
In all that we do, we try to maintain a playful stance toward deadly serious problems.
That is our ethos.
Come join us and help us find the fun. Deconstructing Addiction League is an experimental community project exploring new ways of responding to substance use dilemmas.
Our approach is inspired by Narrative Therapy and Community Work. Rather than seeing people as broken, deficient, or defined by a diagnosis, we begin with a different idea:
The person is not the problem. The problem is the problem.
We are interested in the many ways people become caught in difficult relationships with alcohol and other drugs. We understand these relationships as being shaped not only by our biology and psychology, but also by culture, economics, isolation, belonging, pleasure, and the social worlds we inhabit.
Many conversations about addiction focus primarily on what is wrong with the individual.
We are interested in a different set of questions.
Instead of asking:
What is wrong with you?
we ask:
What conditions made this relationship with substances possible?
We look beyond biology and personal responsibility alone to examine larger influences:
Drinking and drug culture
Consumer culture
Isolation and disconnection
Poverty and social inequality
Community and belonging
Meaning, pleasure, and purpose
This means we see substance use dilemmas as more than personal problems. Individuals exist within larger social worlds that shape their experiences and possibilities. Any meaningful response must therefore attend to social and cultural factors as well as individual ones.
The Deconstructing Addiction League is a place for people who want to think differently about substance use, identity, connection, and change.
A Different Question
Most approaches to addiction ask:
How do we get people to stop using substances?
We are interested in another question:
How do people build lives that are rich enough that substances become less necessary?
How do people create friendship, connection, hospitality, celebration, excitement, adventure, and meaning without alcohol and other drugs at the center?
How do we learn to have a blast together without relying on substances as the primary social lubricant?
These questions sit at the heart of the Deconstructing Addiction League.
The New Party
We believe that whenever people gather to connect, celebrate, play, and enjoy each other's company without alcohol or drugs at the center, they are already deconstructing addiction.
This may sound simple, but it challenges some deeply rooted cultural assumptions.
Many of us have inherited the idea that alcohol is what makes parties fun, that drinking creates connection, and that substances are necessary for hospitality and belonging.
But what if these capacities already exist within us?
What if fun, camaraderie, and joy can be cultivated deliberately?
What if we can become skilled at creating atmospheres where people feel welcome, alive, playful, and connected?
This is the experiment.
Fun Is Not Frivolous
Many people know how to stop using substances.
Far fewer know how to build a life that feels genuinely enjoyable without them.
We take fun seriously.
Play, laughter, friendship, adventure, hospitality, and meaningful social connection are not luxuries. They are essential ingredients in a life worth participating in.
Isolation, boredom, and disconnection often intensify the desire to use substances.
Connection can loosen their grip.
Conversations That Matter
Alongside our social events, we host conversations that help people respond to issues such as craving, despair, isolation, discouragement, and the many challenges that arise when changing a relationship with substances.
Using ideas from Narrative Therapy and Community Work, we help people investigate their experiences in ways that are collaborative, respectful, and non-pathologizing.
Together, we explore practical ways forward.
Why This Matters
Many approaches focus on reducing harm.
We care about that too.
But reducing harm is not enough.
Many of us need additional ways to live well:
We need friendship.
We need purpose.
We need pleasure.
We need good stories about who we are becoming.
We need communities worth belonging to.
The Deconstructing Addiction League exists to help create those possibilities.
An Invitation
The Deconstructing Addiction League is not a finished program.
It is an evolving social experiment.
We are learning how to create new forms of connection, new forms of hospitality, and perhaps even a new kind of party—one that doesn't leave people isolated, broke, hungover, or disconnected from their lives.
In all that we do, we try to maintain a playful stance toward deadly serious problems.
That is our ethos.
Come join us and help us find the fun.