Buoy for addiction recovery support
Better Angels' Buoy can be used by peers of the same group to support one another in times of need. This reduces the support burden of individual members of the group, helps build community solidarity, and makes call trees faster by parallelizing some of the work.
Roy has had a bad day. Again. He has been struggling with alcoholism for a number of years and is trying to reach a new sobriety personal best by avoiding alcohol for three weeks running. But today was hard. He is feeling depressed and decides to take a walk.
Without realizing it, he arrives outside the corner bar. Ordinarily, Roy would give up, walk in, and have too much to drink. But last week, at one of his support group meetings, a woman named Carol who was there introduced him to Buoy and helped many of the members set up what she called a "personal help team." Roy walked through the process of creating an account and adding Carol as well as several other of his buddies from the group to his team.
Now, standing in front of the bar, he decided to try seeking help from something other than the bottle.
Roy took his phone from his pocket and presses the "Buoy: Activate Alert" button, launching the panic button screens:
He presses the top-right button, the one with the chat bubble icon on it, which opens the "custom alert" dialog in which he types the following message:
standing in front of Finnigan's Pub. fuck this. i know i shouldn't go in. help.
Then he presses the "Send" button, and watches Buoy send an alert:
Buoy then shows Roy the "Safety information" screen that his addiction recovery support group facilitator had programmed into the tool. The safety information contained an AA hotline number, the facilitator's own number, as well as the numbers for medical clinics in the city serviced by the group, where Roy lives.
But Roy didn't want to call a hotline. Not this time. They wouldn't understand, not really. Plus, he was standing right in front of a bar, in public. It would feel silly speaking to a stranger out loud on the street like this. Roy clicked the little close button (the "x") in the top-right corner of the safety information window, revealing the chat room where he is the only person there.
So lonely. Roy remembered the last time something like this happened. Back then, he had also opened his phone and began rifling through his contact lists. He gritted his teeth looking a the list: one friend was three cities away, and probably asleep. Another stopped calling him back after that fight they had, and Roy wondered why his number was still even in his phone. This time, he waits in the chat room, hoping something different will happen.
In less than a minute, the chat room member count jumps from 1 to 2. It's Carol, who typed:
Hey Roy. What happened today?
Roy doesn't respond. He's not sure what to say, and maybe he didn't really expect anyone to respond. Plus, he doesn't now Carol that well. But in another minute, the chat room count jumps from 2 to 3. This time it's George, his best bud from the support group. He sees a message from George underneath Carol's:
Bud what's up?
Roy composes himself and types back, relieved that to everyone walking by, he looks just like the dozen other people standing around using their phones.
fought with the boss at work. fuck that guy, yknow. then ended up here. don't know how.
Shortly thereafter, yet another friend from the support group joins the chat, having clicked "Respond" to Roy's alert. Then another. Soon, Roy is sharing what happened at work with his friends, Carol smiles to herself and leaves the chat room to give the closer friends their own space, and Roy has begun walking back home, never entering the bar.