Community Guidelines

HEAL works because members trust each other. People come here on good days and on the worst days of their lives, and they speak honestly because they believe the room is safe. These guidelines protect that trust.

They apply everywhere on HEAL: live meetings, the help board, your profile, reports, and any contact between members that starts on HEAL. They are part of our Terms of Use, and they apply equally to members, volunteer hosts, moderators and staff. They are enforced by people, not just filters.

• Dignity. Recovery is not a moral test. We speak about addiction, relapse and each other without shame.
• Many paths. 12-step, medication-supported recovery, faith-based, secular, harm reduction, family recovery: all are welcome here. Nobody is told their path is wrong.
• Experience over expertise. We share what happened to us and what helped. We leave diagnosis and treatment to professionals.
• Privacy as care. Protecting someone’s story is one of the kindest things you can do for them.
• Clean incentives. Nobody profits from anyone else’s recovery on HEAL.
• Showing up. Sometimes the most helpful thing is to listen.

When someone shares in a meeting or on the help board, they’re trusting the people who hear it. So:

• Don’t repeat who you saw in a meeting, or what they said, to anyone outside it, including on social media and in other groups.
• Don’t try to work out who someone is in real life, and don’t confirm it if you recognise them.
• If you do recognise someone, let them decide whether to acknowledge it.
• It’s fine to talk about what you learned or felt, as long as nobody else can be identified from it.

HEAL doesn’t record meetings and doesn’t publish attendee lists. The rest depends on all of us.

Disagree gently, and with ideas, never with people. We don’t allow:

• harassment, bullying, threats, intimidation or name-calling;
• slurs, hate or discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, health condition (including HIV status or substance use history), age, or immigration status;
• shaming people for their recovery path, their medication, their relapse, or how long they’ve been sober;
• unwanted romantic or sexual attention, sexual content, or pursuing someone who is vulnerable, including “thirteenth-stepping” newcomers;
• pressuring anyone to share, to attend, or to meet up.

Some meetings are for a particular group, such as women, men, LGBTQ+ members, families or newcomers. Please respect the purpose of the room you join.

This is the rule we enforce most strictly. People in early recovery are targeted by a predatory industry that profits from steering them into treatment or housing. HEAL will not be a place where that happens.

You may not:

• recruit, refer or steer members to a treatment center, detox, sober-living home, recovery residence, lab or any other program in return for money, gifts, free rent, travel or anything else of value, or on behalf of someone who pays for referrals;
• engage in “patient brokering” or “body brokering”: being paid, or paying someone, per patient, admission or referral. This is a crime in many states, and the federal Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (EKRA, 18 U.S.C. § 220) makes paying or receiving kickbacks for referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities and laboratories a federal crime;
• offer people free travel, housing, phones, cash or other incentives to enter a program;
• advertise or sell any product or service, including supplements, coaching, MLMs or crowdfunding for yourself;
• use a host or helper role, or the help board, to find clients or customers.

If you work in treatment, you’re welcome here as a person in recovery or an ally. Just leave your job at the door. Sharing that something helped you is fine; promoting where you work, or handing out your work contact details, is not.

Suspected solicitation can be reported with the “Treatment-center solicitation or sales” reason. Members who solicit can be removed without warnings, and we may report patient brokering to the authorities.

It’s great to say “here’s what worked for me”. It isn’t OK to tell someone what to do with their body, their medication or their legal case. Please don’t:

• tell anyone to start, stop, change or taper medication, including buprenorphine, methadone, naltrexone, benzodiazepines or psychiatric medication;
• give instructions for detoxing or managing withdrawal at home (withdrawal can be medically dangerous);
• diagnose anyone, or discourage them from seeing a doctor;
• give legal directions about a case, probation, custody or immigration;
• criticise someone’s medication-supported recovery. Medication is a legitimate path to recovery.

Instead, encourage people to talk to a prescriber, pharmacist, doctor or lawyer, and share how you found yours. See the Health & Emergency Disclaimer.

HEAL is not an emergency service, and members, hosts and staff can’t send help to anyone. But you can make sure the right help is reached.

If it’s you:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 · chat at 988lifeline.org
• Emergency services: Immediate danger, overdose, medical emergency
• SAMHSA National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 · free, confidential, 24/7
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 · text START to 88788

If it’s someone else: if they say they’re in immediate danger, may be overdosing or have been hurt, and you know where they are, call 911. Encourage them to call or text 988. Then report it in the app using “Someone may be in danger”. These reports go to the top of the queue.

What hosts do: a host who hears that someone may be in danger will share crisis resources with the room or the person, may pause or redirect the share, and escalates to HEAL staff. Hosts aren’t clinicians, so they won’t counsel someone through a crisis, but they won’t ignore it either.

What we do: staff review danger reports first. We may reach out to the member with resources. In rare cases, where we believe there is a serious and imminent threat to someone’s life or safety, we may share limited information with emergency services, as the law allows. Our Privacy Policy explains when that can happen.

Please don’t try to crowdsource help for an emergency on the help board or in a meeting; it costs time. Call first.

HEAL meetings are audio only. Before you join, you accept the room rules.

• Everyone joins muted. Raise your hand to share and the host will invite you to unmute. Hands are taken in the order they went up.
• No cross-talk. Speak from your own experience. Don’t respond to, correct, advise or debate another person’s share.
• Keep shares focused and leave room for others. Hosts may gently move things along.
• Mind the background. Use headphones if others nearby could hear the room, and make sure nobody who isn’t a member is listening.
• Follow the host. Hosts can mute someone, lower a hand, lock the room to new arrivals, end the meeting, and remove someone who makes the room unsafe. Someone who’s removed can’t rejoin that meeting.
• Afterwards you can leave private feedback on whether you felt safe; it isn’t shown to the room or the host by name. It helps us support hosts.

The help board is for practical, person-to-person help: rides, work, housing next steps, career paths, peer connection, sponsorship and everyday life. Post in good faith, offer only what you can actually do, and keep commerce off the board. Never ask for or send money to someone you haven’t met. Medical, withdrawal, self-harm, safety and legal emergencies don’t go on the public board; HEAL shows the right resource straight away and a person on the team reviews the post. The full rules are in the Help Board Terms.

• Don’t share anyone’s real name, photo, address, workplace, phone number, email or social media without their clear permission. Doxxing gets you removed.
• No screenshots, screen recordings or audio recordings of meetings, help-board conversations or anyone’s profile, and don’t pass on a workbook page someone shared with you.
• Don’t share other people’s stories, even with names removed, if they could be recognised.
• Don’t post someone’s health, legal or immigration situation.

Use the “Sharing someone’s private info” reason to report this. It is treated as high priority.

We talk openly about substances because recovery requires it. What we don’t allow:

• promoting or glamorising drug or alcohol use, or encouraging someone to use;
• buying, selling, trading or sourcing drugs, alcohol or prescription medication, or sharing where to get them;
• describing how to use, dose or combine substances;
• attending a meeting so impaired that you disrupt it. A host may ask you to step out and come back another time.

Relapse is not a rule break. If you’ve used, you’re welcome here. You can talk about it honestly without being judged, lectured or asked to leave. Information that keeps people alive, like knowing that naloxone reverses opioid overdoses, is welcome too.

• No spam, chain messages, repetitive posts, or links that exist to drive traffic.
• No scams, phishing, fake requests, or asking members for money, gift cards, crypto, account details or passwords.
• Don’t pretend to be another member, a host, HEAL staff, a clinician or an organization. HEAL staff will never ask for your password.
• Don’t create multiple accounts to mislead people or to get around a suspension.

HEAL accounts are for people 18 and over. Don’t bring a child into a meeting room, and never share images or information about a minor. Anything that sexualises or endangers a child is removed immediately, the account is closed, and we report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and law enforcement as the law requires. If you think a member is under 18, report it or email safety@teleheal.com.

You can report any member, meeting, help request or offer from inside the app. Your report isn’t shown to the person you report. Choose the reason that fits best:

• Someone may be in danger
• Sharing someone’s private info
• Unsafe advice (medical, legal)
• Harassment or bullying
• Treatment-center solicitation or sales
• Spam or scam
• Something else

Reports about danger, privacy and unsafe advice are reviewed first. Once we’ve looked, we let you know whether we took action, without sharing details about the other person.

Blocking is instant and doesn’t need a reason. When you block someone, their help-board requests are hidden from you and yours from them. You can see and undo blocks in your account settings. Blocking doesn’t remove anyone from a live meeting; if someone in a room is a problem, tell the host or report the meeting.

Please don’t use reports to settle disagreements or target someone. Knowingly false reports are themselves a rule break.

Trained moderators, who are HEAL staff or approved volunteers, review reports and some help-board posts before they appear. Automated checks help with routing, for example spotting posts that mention self-harm or overdose, but a person makes enforcement decisions. Moderators can’t read workbook answers or check-in notes, and moderation tools never show them.

When deciding what to do, we consider what happened, the harm or risk to others, whether it was intentional, and the person’s history. Every moderation action is recorded with a note, and staff actions are kept in an audit log.

Most of the time we start small, because people make mistakes and we believe in second chances. The usual steps are:

1. A reminder or no action, if it was a misunderstanding.
2. Content hidden or removed, such as a help-board post.
3. A warning.
4. Removal from a meeting by a host or moderator.
5. A temporary suspension, for a set number of days. A suspended account is signed out and can’t be used.
6. Permanent removal from HEAL.

We skip straight to suspension or removal for the most serious conduct: solicitation or patient brokering, threats or violence, doxxing, recording meetings, sexual exploitation, anything involving minors, selling drugs, or coming back after a removal.

If you think we got it wrong, email safety@teleheal.com from the address on your account within 30 days. Tell us what happened and why the decision should change. Someone other than the person who made the original decision will review it where our team’s size allows, and we’ll let you know the outcome. Appeals can restore content, lift or shorten a suspension, or leave the decision in place.

People with a role on HEAL are held to these guidelines and to a higher standard, under the Volunteer Host & Moderator Agreement. They must:

• use their tools only for their role, never for personal reasons or to look someone up;
• never record meetings or keep notes that identify members;
• never recruit members for any program, offer paid sponsorship, or use their role to start a romantic, financial or business relationship with a member;
• disclose conflicts of interest, such as working for a treatment provider;
• escalate safety concerns to staff instead of handling them alone.

If a host, moderator or staff member breaks these guidelines, report it in the app or email safety@teleheal.com. Reports about staff are reviewed by someone other than the person reported.

We’ll update these guidelines as the community grows, and we’ll tell members about significant changes in the app. Questions or suggestions are welcome at safety@teleheal.com.