Addiction Recovery Spaces & the Trans Community

I’m coming up on the two-year anniversary of a friend’s death due to overdose. For the purpose of this essay, I’ll call her Bailey. We had come to know each other through trans therapy spaces and were part of each other's lives, in some capacity, for roughly four years. Her death has impacted me significantly and is part of the reason why I chose to seek a healthier relationship with alcohol and other substances.

Bailey’s overdose didn’t come to me as a shock. In sober spaces, everyone knows of the relapse — when a sober person uses their substance…