About Crosstalk Recovery

Born from a 500-pound phone

Our founder, Chris C., is in long-term recovery. After inpatient rehab he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, expecting the meetings and the sponsor. What he did not expect was the homework: call another alcoholic or addict every single day.

"I built Crosstalk because I know what it's like to need to make that call and not be able to."

He struggled with those calls the way so many people do. Most went unanswered, which was hard not to take personally. He procrastinated, then quietly stopped, and felt the shame of it every time his sponsor asked. The community has a name for exactly this: the 500-pound phone. The strange part was that whenever a conversation actually happened, it helped, unmistakably. The obstacle was never the talking. It was the dialing.

He is also an engineer, and the engineer's question would not leave him alone: why can't the computer make the call, and just connect me with someone? Crosstalk is the answer he built. The name is a nod to the meetings themselves, where responding directly to someone's share gets you gently scolded: "No crosstalk!" Crosstalk exists for precisely those conversations, after the meeting, one-on-one.

What guides the design

Crosstalk was created for and by people in recovery, and most of its design traces to a moment somebody lived:

• Unanswered calls felt like rejection, so Crosstalk only connects people who both answered. Nobody dials into a void, and nobody's silence gets taken personally.
• Even a kind check-in could land as shame, so nothing about Crosstalk interrogates you. Missing a call costs nothing. If you want your sponsor or someone else in your corner to know you are putting in the work, you can name a trusted contact who receives participation updates you chose to share, so they never have to ask and you never have to report.
• Giving a stranger your phone number is a real barrier, so calls are bridged. You go by the name you choose, numbers are never shown, and staying in touch is a decision two people make together.
• Answering into silence would be the cruelest outcome, so backup members are always on call, and when a conversation falls through the system works to reconnect the person still on the line.

What we are doing now

Crosstalk Recovery is an early-stage organization, and our current work is the unglamorous kind that early stages are made of:

• Program development. Shaping the peer support calling program for recovery settings: scheduled one-on-one calls, group circles for treatment cohorts and recovery groups, and the privacy rules that make both safe.
• Listening to the community. Ongoing conversations with people in recovery, peer support specialists, and treatment program staff, so the program fits the way recovery actually works rather than the way software wishes it worked.
• Preparing pilots. Building relationships with addiction treatment programs and peer recovery organizations to run the program's first pilots, which will measure whether the service delivers the connection the evidence points to.

The service is free to the people who use it, and keeping it free is part of why the organization is a nonprofit.