Terms of Use

These Terms of Use (“terms”) are an agreement between you and HEAL (Help Each Other Achieve Life) (“HEAL”, “we”, “us”). They cover the website at teleheal.com, the HEAL member app on the web (app.teleheal.com), mobile and desktop, live meetings, the workbook, the help board, the provider directory and any related emails or notifications (together, the “service”).

By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these terms and to the documents they include by reference:

• the Community Guidelines;
• the Help Board Terms, when you post or offer help;
• the Volunteer Host & Moderator Agreement, if you volunteer in one of those roles;
• the Copyright & Content Policy; and
• the Health & Emergency Disclaimer.

If you buy from the HEAL shop or become a supporter, the Shop Terms of Sale or the Supporter Terms also apply to that purchase or payment.

How we handle personal information is explained in the Privacy Policy and the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree to these terms, please don’t use the service.

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or join meetings and the help board. HEAL is built for adults: people in recovery, their families and their allies. When you sign up, you confirm that you are 18 or older; we record when you did, and we can’t create an account without that confirmation. Confirming it when it isn’t true breaks these terms. We don’t knowingly allow anyone under 18 to hold an account, and if we learn that a member is under 18 we will close the account and delete its data as described in the deletion policy. If you believe a minor is using HEAL, tell us at safety@teleheal.com.

You also can’t use HEAL if we have previously removed you from the service, unless we have agreed in writing that you may return, or if using it would break the law where you live.

The public website, including its crisis resources, is open to everyone.

You sign up with an email address and password and confirm your email. We use automated bot checks during sign-up and sign-in to keep out spam accounts.

• Pseudonyms are welcome. You choose a display name and an emoji-and-colour avatar. You don’t need to use your real name, and you shouldn’t use an email address, phone number or someone else’s name as your display name.
• One person, one account. Don’t share your account, create accounts for other people, or open new accounts to get around a suspension.
• Keep it secure. Use a strong password you don’t use elsewhere, and tell us at support@teleheal.com if you think someone else has accessed your account.
• Agreements during onboarding. Before you take part, we ask you to accept the community rules, our privacy approach, and that HEAL is not an emergency service. We keep a record of what you accepted and when.

You’re responsible for activity on your account unless it happened because someone got in without your fault and you told us promptly.

HEAL is a peer community for life after addiction treatment. It offers live audio meetings run by trained volunteer hosts, a private guided workbook, a help board for practical help between members, and a short directory of independently reviewed treatment providers.

HEAL is not:

• a treatment provider, clinic, therapist, counselor, sponsor or sober-living operator;
• a crisis line or an emergency or monitoring service;
• a source of medical, medication, clinical, legal or financial advice. What members, hosts and staff share is personal experience and general information only;
• a health care provider covered by HIPAA, or a federally assisted substance use disorder program under 42 CFR Part 2. We still protect your information carefully, as described in our privacy documents.

Peer support works best alongside qualified care. Please read the Health & Emergency Disclaimer.

Membership is free, and it will stay free. Meetings, the workbook, the help board, crisis resources and the provider directory are the same for every member, and no part of them sits behind a paywall. We don’t show ads in member areas and we never sell member data.

HEAL is funded in part by two optional extras, each with its own terms:

• The HEAL shop at shop.teleheal.com sells HEAL-branded goods, made to order. Buying is covered by the Shop Terms of Sale. Member apps may show a quiet link to the shop, but you can’t buy inside the apps.
• Supporters can choose a monthly plan or make a one-time payment to help keep HEAL running, covered by the Supporter Terms. HEAL is not a 501(c)(3) charity, so support is not a charitable donation and is not tax-deductible.

Neither is ever required. Buying something or becoming a supporter never gives you extra access, priority, or any influence over moderation, hosting or the provider directory, and choosing not to never counts against you. Perks are limited to optional cosmetic touches and a shop discount.

If we ever introduce anything else that costs money, we’ll tell you clearly in advance, it will be optional, and these terms will be updated first.

As long as you follow these terms, we give you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the service, and to install our apps on devices you own or control, for your own non-commercial use.

You agree not to:

• copy, scrape, crawl or harvest the service or other members’ information, including with bots or automated tools;
• reverse engineer, decompile or try to get around security, rate limits, bot checks or access controls, except where the law expressly allows it (good-faith security research under our responsible disclosure policy is welcome);
• interfere with the service, introduce malware, or overload our systems;
• use the service to build a competing product, train machine-learning models on member content, or for any commercial purpose, including marketing to members;
• use the service in a way that breaks the law or other people’s rights.

“Your content” means what you put into HEAL: your profile, help-board requests and offers, reports, meeting feedback, workbook answers, check-in notes and anything else you write or upload.

You own your content. To run the service, you give HEAL a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, display and transmit your content, only as needed to operate, secure and improve the service for you and the people you choose to share with, and to keep the community safe. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must keep for safety or legal reasons as described in the deletion policy, and except where you shared content with another member who still has it.

We will not use your content in advertising, sell it, or publish it outside the service without your separate, explicit permission.

You’re responsible for your content. Only post what you have the right to share, and don’t post other people’s private information or stories.

Workbook answers and check-in notes are private to you. They are encrypted at rest with a key held only by our server, and our staff tools are built so they never load them. Staff, hosts and moderators cannot read them.

You can choose to share selected answers with someone by creating a share link. A link:

• contains only the answers you pick, as they were when you shared them;
• lasts for the period you choose, from 1 to 14 days (7 days unless you change it);
• works for anyone who has it, so send it only to the person you mean, and keep in mind they could pass it on or copy what they read;
• can be turned off at any time from the app, and shows you how many times it has been opened.

Once someone has read what you shared, we can’t take it back from them. Share with care.

The Community Guidelines are part of these terms. In short, you agree to treat people with kindness, keep what others share private, give experience rather than advice, and never:

• harass, threaten, shame or discriminate against anyone;
• share another person’s identity, story, location or contact details without their permission;
• solicit, recruit or advertise for treatment centers, sober-living homes, products or services, or offer or accept anything of value for referrals;
• give medical, medication, detox or legal directions;
• record, screenshot or redistribute meetings or private conversations;
• promote or sell drugs or alcohol, post spam or scams, or impersonate anyone.

Meetings are live, audio-only rooms run by trained volunteer hosts. Before joining you accept the room rules. Everyone joins muted, raises a hand to speak, and is invited to unmute by the host.

• No recording. HEAL does not record meetings. You agree not to record, transcribe, screenshot, stream or otherwise capture any part of a meeting, by any means, and not to let anyone who isn’t a member listen in.
• Confidentiality between members. What’s said in a meeting stays there. You agree not to repeat who was present or what they shared. This is a promise between members and part of these terms; we enforce it, but we can’t guarantee every member keeps it, so share what feels right for you.
• Host decisions. Hosts can mute participants, lower hands, lock a room, end a meeting and remove someone who makes the room unsafe. Someone removed from a meeting can’t rejoin that meeting. Removals are logged for our moderators to review.
• No public attendee lists. We don’t publish who attends, and hosts don’t get attendee lists or exports.

Meetings may be cancelled, rescheduled or ended early, for example if a host can’t attend or for safety reasons.

The help board lets members ask for and offer practical help such as rides, job leads, housing next steps and peer connection. Using it means you also agree to the Help Board Terms. HEAL does not employ, screen, background-check or supervise members who offer help, is not a party to any arrangement between members, and doesn’t guarantee that help will be offered, suitable or safe. High-risk topics (self-harm, overdose, withdrawal, medication, danger at home and legal emergencies) never go on the public board; requests that touch them are held for a person on our team and you are shown crisis and professional resources straight away.

Our directory lists a small number of treatment providers reviewed against HEAL’s published 13-point standard and approved under a committee rule, with rechecks over time. A listing reflects our review as of the date shown. It is information to help you ask good questions, not a referral, a recommendation for your particular situation, an endorsement of outcomes or a guarantee of care.

HEAL never accepts payment for a listing, for a review outcome, or per admission or referral. Example listings shown during development are clearly marked as samples. Always confirm details directly with the provider, check licensing yourself, and talk to your own clinician. Providers that take part agree to the separate Provider Listing Terms.

HEAL links to outside resources such as crisis lines, government services and provider websites. We don’t control those sites and aren’t responsible for their content, availability or privacy practices; read their terms before you use them.

We use service providers to run HEAL (for example for hosting, live audio, email, push notifications, payments and printing shop orders). They are listed on our service providers page. If you download our mobile apps, the app store you use (such as Apple’s App Store or Google Play) has its own terms, which also apply to your use of that store. The app store is not responsible for the HEAL app or for support; HEAL is. For Apple devices, Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you as they relate to the app.

We love hearing how to make HEAL better. If you send us suggestions or ideas, you agree we may use them to improve the service without paying you or owing you anything. We won’t publicly attribute feedback to you without asking, and this doesn’t give us any rights to your personal recovery content or your private meeting feedback beyond what the Privacy Policy describes.

Apart from your content and other members’ content, the service and everything in it, including the software, design, workbook exercises, articles, illustrations and the provider standard, belong to HEAL or its licensors and are protected by copyright and other laws. You may use workbook exercises for your own recovery and share your own answers; you may not republish the exercises themselves or use them commercially.

“HEAL”, “Help Each Other Achieve Life” and the HEAL logo are HEAL’s marks. Please don’t use them in a way that suggests HEAL endorses you, your organization or a product, and never in connection with a treatment-center, sober-living or referral business. Details are in the Copyright & Content Policy, which also explains how to report copyright infringement to copyright@teleheal.com.

People, not just filters, keep HEAL safe. Members can report any member, meeting, help request or offer from inside the app, and reports are reviewed by trained moderators in order of risk. Some help-board posts are also checked before they appear.

Depending on what happened, how serious it was and whether it has happened before, we may:

• take no action, or explain the rule;
• hide or remove content;
• give a warning;
• remove someone from a meeting;
• suspend an account for a set period or indefinitely; or
• close an account permanently.

We can act on our own initiative, and we may skip steps when someone’s safety is at risk or the conduct is serious, such as solicitation or patient brokering, threats, doxxing or sharing recordings. We keep a record of moderation decisions and of staff actions.

Appeals. If you think we got a decision wrong, email safety@teleheal.com from your account’s email address within 30 days, saying what happened and why you think it should change. Someone who wasn’t involved in the original decision will look at it, where our team’s size allows, and we’ll tell you the outcome. We aim to explain our decisions where it is safe to do so, but we may not share details that would expose another member.

You can leave any time. You can stop using HEAL and delete your account yourself in the app, or by asking us. Deletion removes your profile, workbook and help-board content as described in that policy.

We can suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, if we need to in order to protect members or comply with the law, or if we stop offering the service. A suspended account is signed out and can’t be used until the suspension ends. Where it is safe and lawful, we’ll tell you why and how to appeal.

If HEAL ever shuts down the service as a whole, we will give members reasonable notice and a chance to export their data first.

The sections on your content (as to copies we lawfully keep), feedback, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, disputes and governing law continue after your account ends.

We work hard to make HEAL safe and reliable, but a free peer community has limits, and the law lets us say so plainly.

Some states don’t allow certain warranties to be disclaimed, so some of this may not apply to you.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud, or death or personal injury caused by our negligence where the law doesn’t permit a limit, and nothing limits rights you have as a consumer that cannot be waived. The specific amount above is pending review by counsel.

If someone brings a claim against HEAL because you intentionally or recklessly broke these terms or the law, or because your content infringes someone else’s rights, you agree to cover HEAL’s reasonable costs of that claim, including reasonable legal fees, to the extent the claim was caused by you. This doesn’t apply to the extent a claim results from HEAL’s own conduct, and it doesn’t apply to honest mistakes, good-faith reports to us, or your ordinary use of the service as intended. We’ll tell you promptly about any such claim and let you take part in the defence.

1. Talk to us first. Most problems can be fixed with a conversation. Before starting any formal claim, email legal@teleheal.com with your name, the email on your account, what happened and what you’d like us to do. We’ll do the same before bringing a claim against you. Both sides agree to try in good faith to resolve it within 60 days. During that time, deadlines for bringing a claim are paused.

2. Small claims court. If we can’t resolve it, either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court in the county where you live, if the claim qualifies.

3. Other claims (draft, pending counsel). Our current intent is that other disputes be resolved by individual arbitration under the consumer rules of a recognized arbitration provider, held remotely or in the county where you live, with HEAL paying all arbitration fees beyond the amount you would pay to file in court. You could opt out of arbitration by emailing legal@teleheal.com within 30 days of first accepting these terms, with no effect on your account. Claims would be brought individually, not as a class; if that limit is held unenforceable for a claim, that claim would go to court and not arbitration. Either of us could still go to court for an order to stop infringement of intellectual property or misuse of the service, and you could always report issues to a government agency.

These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state that counsel confirms before launch, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Whatever state is chosen, you keep the protection of any consumer-protection laws of the state where you live that can’t be waived by agreement. If you live outside the US, you also keep the mandatory consumer protections of your country of residence.

We may update these terms as HEAL grows or the law changes. We’ll post the new version here with its effective date. For changes that materially affect your rights, we’ll tell you in the app or by email at least 30 days before they take effect, unless a change is needed sooner for safety or legal reasons. If you keep using HEAL after a change takes effect, the new terms apply. If you don’t agree, you can delete your account before then.

• Entire agreement. These terms and the documents they reference are the whole agreement between you and HEAL about the service and replace earlier agreements on the same subject.
• Severability. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, that part will be limited or removed as little as necessary and the rest stays in effect.
• No waiver. If we don’t enforce a term right away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You can’t transfer your account or these terms to someone else. We may transfer them to a successor organization that takes over HEAL and agrees to protect member data at least as strictly as our privacy documents promise; we’ll tell you before that happens.
• No third-party rights. Except as stated for app stores, these terms don’t give rights to anyone other than you and HEAL.
• Events beyond our control. We aren’t responsible for delays or failures caused by events we can’t reasonably control, such as outages at our providers or natural disasters.
• Relationship. Nothing in these terms makes you an employee, agent or partner of HEAL.

We may send you notices by email to the address on your account or through the app. You can send legal notices to legal@teleheal.com; a postal address for legal notices will be published here before launch.

• General questions and account help: support@teleheal.com
• Safety concerns, reports and appeals: safety@teleheal.com
• Legal notices and disputes: legal@teleheal.com
• Copyright: copyright@teleheal.com
• Shop orders and returns: shop@teleheal.com
• Supporter plans and billing: supporters@teleheal.com
• Privacy: privacy@teleheal.com

Every one of these inboxes is read by a person. None of them is monitored for emergencies; if you need help right now, call 911 or call or text 988.