Awakening Recovery - A Non-Profit Structured Recovery Home in West La

09/11/2026

God bless all those we lost on that day and as a result since.❤️🙏

09/10/2026

It was a powerful Summer at AR and in our 10th Anniversary month in July our graduate Austin celebrated 10 years sober! - “I am forever grateful for Awakening Recovery. I never thought I would get a single year let alone double digit sobriety. Awakening truly prepared me for long term sobriety. They gave me the tools to be successful in life and the community to help support me.“ - Austin / Graduate and Alumni Board Member

09/09/2026

You’re invited! Join Awakening Recovery as we celebrate a decade of changing lives and the community that makes long-term recovery possible.

Sunday, November 8, 2026
Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles
6 PM Cocktail Reception
7 PM Dinner and Award Presentation

Come celebrate with our graduates, families, friends, and supporters. Individual tickets are $350, and sponsorship opportunities are available.

Tickets, sponsorships, and full event details:
https://secure.qgiv.com/event/awakeningrecoveryauction

09/03/2026

Recovery happens together.

Connection is not an extra in recovery. It is part of the foundation.

Recovery housing, peer support, families, employers, faith communities, treatment providers, and other community supports each have a different role. When those roles connect, people have stronger support for the daily work of recovery.

This Recovery Month, we celebrate the people doing that work—and the communities that keep showing up beside them. Recovery is REAL: Restoring Every Aspect of Life.

08/31/2026

Today, Awakening Recovery joins communities around the world in remembering those lost to overdose and holding close the families and friends who carry that grief.

Keeping someone alive is essential. So is what comes next: a safe place to live, structure, accountability, peer community, and enough time to build a lasting foundation in recovery. That is the missing middle we work to fill every day.

Twenty-five years on, International Overdose Awareness Day is still needed. We will keep remembering—and keep working toward a future in which fewer families experience this loss.

International Overdose Awareness Day is an initiative of Penington Institute: https://www.overdoseday.com/

08/28/2026

Why is our addiction-care system so much better at funding episodes than the long-term conditions that help people stay in recovery?

In his newest article, our Co-Founding Executive Director, David Vandervelde, looks at how the system came to prioritize short-term clinical care—and why long-term recovery housing, accountability and 12-Step community, working alongside appropriate clinical services, deserve a larger place in what we fund and measure.

Read “How Addiction Care Learned to Think in Episodes”:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-addiction-care-learned-think-episodes-david-van-der-velde-zotqc

08/14/2026

Clear expectations matter in a recovery home. So do dignity, consistency and the willingness of leaders to learn from difficult decisions.

David Vandervelde’s new article looks at accountability from both directions: the responsibility residents take for their recovery and the responsibility a recovery home has to pause, listen and honestly review its own actions.

Read “Recovery Requires Accountability on Both Sides of the Door”:

In 2021, Authority Magazine asked how I define leadership. Five years later, those principles still guide me, but my understanding of how to apply them has evolved.

08/10/2026

08/08/2026

What should count as success in addiction care?

In his latest article, our Co-Founding Executive Director David Vandervelde looks beyond a completed treatment episode to the longer-term outcomes that show whether people are building and sustaining lives in recovery: sobriety, housing stability, employment, social connection, recovery capital and continued support over time.

Read the article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-should-count-success-addiction-care-david-van-der-velde-wfbxc/

07/29/2026

Nearly one in four Los Angeles County young adults ages 18 to 25 had a substance use disorder in the past year. In a new article, Awakening Recovery Co-Founding Executive Director David Vandervelde connects the latest NSDUH and Los Angeles County data to a larger question: What does lasting recovery require when substance use, mental health issues, housing instability, and development are deeply interconnected?

Read the article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/young-adults-los-angeles-need-more-than-short-window-van-der-velde-jjyvc