Addiction changes people’s lives forever. But behind the stories of substance abuse are also those who managed to break out of it and see the brighter side of things. Whatever the reason for turning to drugs or alcohol was in the first place, the most important thing is that they found the courage and strength to turn their lives around. 

Empowering others struggling with hardships, Bored Panda compiled a list of people who prove that overcoming anything is possible with the right mindset and support. Scroll down to see powerful before and after pictures of people’s astonishing achievements in kicking addictions’ behind. 

While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out an important conversation with Gillian Tietz, educator and host of the Sober Powered podcast, and Dr. Hannah Roberts, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and mindful drinking coach, who use their background and experience to spread information about addiction.

#1 I’m 19 Months Clean And I’m Finally Starting To See The Beauty In Life Again. Hope, This Inspires Some People Much Love

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#2 I Was An Addict For Over 10 Years Of My Life, But My Son Came Into This World With A Sober Dad

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#3 One Year Sober And 37 Kg (81 Lbs) Down! This Is The Longest I've Gone Without Alcohol Since I Was 15, And I'm Now 29

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While the number of people suffering from addiction is disheartening, the good news is that nearly 75% of them are either in recovery or have completed treatment and are working on staying on the right path. Similarly, roughly 75% of all individuals who seek addiction treatment are successful.

Something that helps battle addiction is support and understanding. This can be done by educating ourselves and shedding more light on the misconceptions about substance abuse, which can hinder the progress of providing people with the care they need. 

To better our understanding of this epidemic, we reached out to experts for their insights. One of them is Gillian Tietz, educator and host of the Sober Powered podcast, who uses her biochemistry background and previous experience of alcohol abuse to spread information about addiction.

We also contacted Dr. Hannah Roberts, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and mindful drinking coach who helps individuals change their drinking without judgment or a sobriety requirement through her online course, Mindful Moderation.

#4 I Just Celebrated My 5th Year Of Being Clean. My Last Mugshot And A Picture From Today, 5 Years Difference. I Hope This Inspires Someone

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#5 Photo 1: January 2020, Photo 2: October 2023. Now I Am 31 Years Old And Sober

After a 17-year journey of daily substance abuse involving drugs that nearly took my life, the transformation is one of my biggest achievements. During darkness, I have found a renewed sense of self. The glow I now radiate is not just visible but palpable. Happiness, once forgotten, has been replaced by a profound addiction to pride and self-love.

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#6 While Addicted, My Face Collapsed Because I Lost Most Of My Teeth To Drugs, It's Just Miserable. It's Almost 2 Years After I Got Sober. Now I Have A Fuller Face And A New Puppy

Oh! And I found the love of my life, who is also sober.

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Tietz explains that some people find illicit substances appealing because they let a person feel however they wish to at any moment. Roberts mentions, "Humans are always looking for ways to feel different or better and have done so throughout time. Many substances DO alleviate physical or emotional pain or help people feel different in some way. The problem is that these effects are often fleeting."

Another reason why people abuse substances is to relieve negative emotions like anger or strengthen positive emotions like happiness and excitement. “Boredom is also a big trigger for addiction because you don't have to find someone fun or interesting to do, alcohol/drugs can instantly make boring activities fun and make us instantly feel comfortable and connected around people we don't know or like,” Tietz adds.

She also mentions that people who struggle with addiction tend to have a lower tolerance for discomfort and can't tolerate a wide range of emotions without getting overwhelmed or checked out (known as the window of tolerance).

“When emotion goes beyond what we can tolerate, it feels very unpleasant, and we can use alcohol/drugs to bring it back into our window. However, when you repeat this process over and over, your window shrinks and you become less resilient. Plus, alcohol damages all areas of the brain, and when we get sober, emotions will actually be heightened and more intense for the first few weeks or months after all the years of numbing.”

#7 1 Year Sober From Alcohol. I Never Thought I’d Be Able To Post This. But Here It Is! Life Isn’t Perfect, But It Is So Much Better

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#8 Last January I Started My Sobriety And Health Journey, I Am A Year And 16 Days Sober And I've Lost A 130 Lbs Already

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#9 Today, I'm 4 Months Sober And Free From My Substance Addiction. Every Day, I Wake Up, And I'm Grateful That I Never Have To Be That Sick Again. Thanks To My Family, Rehab, And Everyone Else

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Some turn to harmful remedies when they wish to escape a life they don’t enjoy. Tietz shares this from her own experience. “I looked forward to the 2 hours of enjoyment I'd get from drinking because it made the next 22 hours of misery tolerable. I couldn't stand my life, and drinking was an escape from that.”

However, something that people don’t realize in the moment is that even though addiction provides a couple of hours of relief, it’s actually fueling those bottled-up feelings even more. She further explains, “Plus, when we drink/use constantly, we can't improve our situation or make our lives more fulfilling. A main part of sobriety is to build a life you don't want to escape from. Your actual life becomes the reward, not the 2-hour escape.”

Tietz also mentions that people who struggle with addiction usually don't have appropriate self-care mechanisms in place. ”They can be people pleasers, not know how to set boundaries, put everyone else's needs before their own, and go go go all day without breaks. By the time the end of the day comes along, alcohol/drugs feel like "me time" because they don't know how to practice self-care. In reality, they're not getting "me time." They're checking out and turning off their brains because they desperately need a break. Poor self-care is one of the most reliable predictors of relapse.”

#10 45 Days Sober Today

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#11 90 Days Sober. 90 Days Since I Suffered Cardiac Arrest. 90 Days Since I Caught Pneumonia. But... 90 Days Since I Took The Opportunity To Have A Fresh Start

The left photo is when I came out of the hospital, and the right photo is today. Love to all.

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#12 6 Years Sober

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The most harmful misconceptions about addiction that Roberts hopes to debunk are that people become reliant on these substances the moment they try them or that they can’t get better. 

“Growing up, a lot of us received the messaging that drugs were bad - that we would become addicted the second we tried something—and that we were morally bad people if we tried or used drugs. There are so many harmful stereotypes in that. First off, many people use different kinds of drugs without ever becoming addicted. And no one really plans to become addicted. Many of the people who struggle with substance use have real problems and real pain that need attention and care.”

There’s also not one moment you become "addicted.” Addiction is a social construct that isn’t easy to define medically. The clinical term we use is substance use disorder, and the disorder is understood to exist on a spectrum of mild, moderate, or severe. People’s drug use (and the related problems) can move up and down on that spectrum throughout the days and weeks, as well as over a lifetime.”

#13 Amazing Difference. Well Done

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#14 200 Lbs To 105 Lbs In 3 Years. Fat Drunk Girl Is Now Sober And Toning This Body Up

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#15 Congratulations And Keep It Up

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Another stereotype she mentions is that people with addiction problems can’t get better. “People DO stop using all the time - sometimes on their own! But relapse is sometimes part of that journey, and that doesn’t mean the person isn’t “serious” or doesn’t “want to change.”I always say taking two steps forward and then one step back is part of normal human learning; the same thing happens when we are changing our drug use. Recovery is an ongoing process,” she explains.

“The concept of “rock bottom” is a stereotype too. Hollywood loves to play with this myth, so it’s what we all think of as the step before recovery. People will sometimes say “Oh, they aren’t ready to change yet. They need to hit rock bottom before they do.” 

This is a dangerous stereotype because it prevents people from getting help earlier. People can want to change and even create change at any time. It’s normal to feel some ambivalence about change, especially if you don’t have solutions for your pain, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself the opportunity to change.”

#16 Congratulations To You. That's Huge

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#17 2.5 Years Sober, Didn’t Have A Legit Job Or ID Until I Was 23. Crazy How Things Can Change If You Just Take The First Steps. I’m 25 Now And Would Never Look Back

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#18 Just A Picture To Remind Me That I Will Never Do It Again! I Am 90 Days Sober Now

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Meanwhile, Tietz wishes people would stop thinking that people struggling with addiction are severely lacking willpower and acting selfishly. She emphasizes that people acting this way don’t have a choice. “As we drink or use more and more, the brain adapts to the presence of the drug/alcohol. After a while, the brain can't function normally without it. We drink or use just to get back to baseline, not even to get anything good anymore.”

“I believe that if the general public understood that addiction changes the brain, then they wouldn't have such harsh judgments. I believed everything the stigma said, and when I realized I had a problem with alcohol, I couldn't handle it. It made me stay stuck longer, desperately trying to learn how to moderate because I didn't want people to label me and judge me. I genuinely believed I was a weak-willed loser and it made me deeply hate myself. We can't shame ourselves sober.

What I've learned from my work helping people get sober is that there is usually a lot of pain and hardship behind someone's drinking. I've worked with hundreds of people, and I have never met a weak-willed loser. The more I learn about someone's story, the more I understand why they were so drawn to alcohol or drugs.”

#19 Alcoholism vs. Sobriety. Today Marks 1000 Days Sober. Going Into Rehab And Having The Courage To Ask For Help Saved My Life

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#20 Glow Up From Drug Addict To Sober For 2 Years

And the best part is that my son was born on my birthday, and I've been sober ever since.

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#21 What A Great Change. I Hope These Pictures Will Inspire Someone

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Recovery is definitely possible, as Tietz and everyone on this list are living proofs of it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy. There’s still a lot of stigma and anxiety surrounding it. “We worry about other people judging us or labeling us. We worry that we will lose all of our friends, and they won't invite us to anything anymore. We worry that we will never fit in again,” Tietz explains.

#22 A Lot Has Changed In My Life Over This Past Year. I Didn’t Realize How Much Sobriety Helped My Skin Until Looking Back At Old Photos. February, 2020 vs. Today

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#23 I Don’t Have Any Friends To Tell This To, But I Hit 7 Years Clean. Never Thought I Would Live This Long Or Be Sober

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#24 4 Years Sober Today

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She further mentions that learning to manage emotions is a difficult task while working on getting better. “When someone begins drinking or using, their emotional maturity halts, and usually we weren't that good at managing emotions before the addiction either. This means that if someone began drinking at 14 and quit at 50, they are now like a 14-year-old in a 50-year-old body.

We do not develop any coping skills or tools to handle life while we drink or use them for every problem we have. Often, these skills were never modeled for us while we were growing up, so we had to figure out how to learn them as adults. 

#25 First Picture - Addicted To Drugs And Committing Crimes Left And Right. Second Picture - 9 Months Sober And No More Problems

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#26 Deep In My Addiction (August 2020) vs. Now (April 2023). Recovery Is Possible

After a decade-long drug and alcohol addiction (and untreated bipolar disorder), many inpatient stays at rehabs, and lockdown mental health facilities, destroying everything around me (including the people I loved), in August of 2020, I almost died.
After a long stay in a mental health facility and then an inpatient substance abuse program, I lived for over a year in a halfway house. During this time, I met my current partner, continued to work on my recovery, and spent hours upon hours in therapy. Last month, my partner and I had our first child. I'm working on completing my master's degree, and I have genuine relationships with other humans. I wouldn't be here without the love and support of not just "my people" but also that of many mental health professionals.

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#27 Getting Sober Is Hard And At Times Uncomfortable. But It Has Given Me My Life Back

All I used to look forward to was getting wasted. I was so uncomfortable in my skin that I only felt "good" when I was partying. Every day I make the conscious decision to stay sober because now I know that I can never go back to the hopelessness that I used to feel.

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#28 200 Lbs Down. 1 Year Drug And Alcohol-Free

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#29 During Addiction vs. 30 Days Sober

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#30 20 Years Of Addiction And Almost Died 5 Times In A Month. 2 Years Later, I'm Clean, Sober And Have The Most Amazing Life

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#31 My Two-Year Sobriety Transformation

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#32 6 Years Difference And 5 Years Sober

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#33 2 Years Sober And Recovering From Anorexia. 4 Years Between Pics - It’s Been A Long Journey. When I See Old Pictures I Hardly Recognize That Crazy Sad Girl, But I Feel For Her

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#34 Seven And A Half Years Sober. Drugs Are Far From Easy To Quit Abusing. My Final Call Was On 9/6/16 And I Haven't Looked Back Since. Recovery Is Possible. I'm Proof Of That

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#35 4 Years Sober After A Life Filled With Arrests And Psych Wards. Now I'm Engaged And A Counselor To The Homeless. Could Not Be More Grateful. One Of My Mugshots On The Left

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#36 2 Years Sober Of Drugs And 2 Months Sober Of Alcohol. Left Is At My Lowest After A Bender And Right Is Me Today Sober. Thank You For All The Advice And Confidence

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#37 254 Days Into This Journey From What Started As 30 Days Of Dry January. What I’ve Learned Is That I Never Needed Alcohol To Be The Life Of The Party

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#38 6 Months Sober And 16 Kg Down. I'm Finally Starting To Feel Like Myself Again

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#39 Me In Active Addiction vs. Me Today, 1 Year Sober

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#40 26 To 30. I Am A Recovered Alcoholic, Quit Smoking A Pack A Day, Developed A Skincare Routine That Makes Me Glow, And Blasted My Forehead With Botox

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#41 Clean For 19 Months

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#42 Me At The Deepest Of My Drug Addiction vs. Me Sober

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#43 5 Years Clean And Sober Today From Crippling Addiction

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#44 You’re On The Right Way Now

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#45 3 Years Alcohol-Free. A Lot Can Change With Effort

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#46 There’re 3 Years Between These Photos But It Feels Like My Entire Life. Went Cold Turkey A Little Over A Month After The Photo On The Left

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#47 Me, At My Worst In Active Addiction vs. Me, Almost A Year And A Half Sober

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#48 6-Months Clean Today. Recovering Addict. Drug Court Has Saved My Life

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#49 This Week Marks 3 Years Since I’ve Had A Sip Of Alcohol. A Blacked Out Zoom Call At The Height Of My Alcoholism vs. The Same Physical Location, But In A Much Better Place Mentally

It makes me smile to know that my son gets the present mom on the right.

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#50 At The Beginning Of 2023 I Was In Prison For My Second DUI, Today I'm A Year Sober And 60 Pounds Down

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