Activist Tracey Helton Reflects on 25 Years Sober

Starring in the 1999 HBO documentary "Black Tar Heroin," Tracey Helton's addiction and recovery has been very public and very online. Here is where Tracey's at now.

Twenty-five years is a long time to be doing anything. It’s also a long time to not be doing something. In the case of Tracey Helton, that not something has been drugs and alcohol. On February 26, 2023, Tracey hit a recovery milestone: Being sober for a quarter of a century after years on the street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where she was precariously housed and injecting a multitude of drugs on the reg.

I called up Tracey on the day after her 25 year anniversary and we talked for over an hour about her life as an activist and author and public figure in the addiction world. How she was taking it all in after 25 years.

Tracey talked about why she stays totally abstinent after all these years. She talked about her ambivalence and skepticism of recovery and 12-step culture. She talked about how her body still reminds her of heroin; how opioids leave a deep imprint in the human psyche. She talked about what it’s like to not be anonymous and to recover in public. She talked about using Reddit and TikTok to espouse harm reduction. She talked about how she’s stayed true to her principles while so many other “recovery advocates” cash in on their identity. She talked about the time she got banned from the White House.

We also discuss the past and present in the Bay Area scene; what to make of the reactionary politics swirling around the city’s “open air drug markets,” which claims that mental health and addiction, not housing and economics, is driving a crisis.

We talked about a ton of stuff. So I’ll shut up. But before I do, I just want readers of this newsletter to know how indebted I am to Tracey Helton. I was a 24-year-old ex-heroin user just starting off my writing career. I read Tracey’s work and we met online. Tracey gave me Tessa Miller’s contact info, who back then was a health and science editor at The Daily Beast. I wrote about 30 articles for Tessa and that really launched my career. I might not be here doing this if it weren’t for her help.

Tracey’s done that exact thing for so many people. It speaks to the type of person she is, someone who truly cares about people and the world. Without further ado, here’s Tracey Helton—“the heroine of heroin”—on being 25 years sober

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Z: Twenty-five years. That’s a very long time. Congratulations.

Tracey Helton (TH): It’s weird because I'm in abstinence-based recovery, and it’s the only thing I know of where you get accolades for doing nothing. Like, you don't have to be a better person. It's a very strange system of acknowledging people, which is probably why it doesn't necessarily work for a lot of people. I mean, I'm very skeptical of it to a certain extent. Time is not the best measure of quality life.

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