Hello,
I wanted to share the story behind Sober Side Up because I don’t think it’s just a story about building an app. It’s a story about recovery, determination, and what became possible when I combined lived experience with AI.
On December 10, 2024, I survived a ruptured brain aneurysm. Recovery was difficult. I dealt with fatigue, headaches, memory problems, and the challenge of rebuilding my life while staying committed to my sobriety. Because of my past, I couldn’t simply go back to spending time with many of the people I used to know. I needed a healthier direction and something meaningful to focus on.
As I attended outpatient treatment, recovery meetings, and counseling, I noticed something that kept bothering me. Recovery programs did an excellent job helping people during meetings, but there seemed to be a gap between those meetings. People might spend one hour in counseling and then be left with the other twenty-three hours of the day with very little structure or guidance. I began asking myself what recovery looked like during all of the time in between.
That question started my year of observation, note-taking, research, and personal reflection. I read material from the DSM, NIDA, ASAM, and many other sources while comparing that information with what I was witnessing in real life. I watched people succeed, struggle, relapse, and recover. I wasn’t looking for statistics alone—I was looking for patterns.
Eventually I realized that recovery wasn’t just about avoiding drugs or alcohol. It involved multiple areas of a person’s life working together. That realization eventually became what I now call the Seven Standards of Recovery.
The first versions were far from polished. My earliest drafts were mostly concepts, diagrams, notes, and observations. The manuscript grew to nearly 500 pages, then around 550 pages as I continued revising it. ChatGPT helped me organize those ideas, explain concepts more clearly, improve readability, and turn a year of scattered thoughts into something people could actually understand.
I even printed multiple editions through my Amazon KDP publisher account, which ChatGPT also walked me through setting up. I shared those early versions with my BHR counselor, peer support specialists, and several other people for feedback. Every revision improved the framework.
Around that same time, I wanted a way to actually use the Seven Standards with people. I had very little programming experience outside of some basic Python projects, but I asked ChatGPT if we could build a simple assessment program.
Together we created my first Python application. It started as a basic questionnaire but eventually evolved into a much more detailed assessment with 21 questions, scoring, personalized summaries, reports, recommendations, and printable client packets. It wasn’t intended to replace clinical care but to provide structured, non-clinical support that could help people understand where they were struggling and what tools might help.
After using the desktop version, I asked ChatGPT a simple question: “How could we make this better?”
It suggested building a mobile application using Flutter, Xcode, Android Studio, and other development tools. I had never used most of them before.
ChatGPT walked me through everything—installing software, setting up development environments, using terminal commands, creating developer accounts, learning Flutter, configuring Xcode, preparing Android builds, and understanding the overall development process.
The first Flutter version was only around 150 lines of code.
It worked, but it wasn’t what I envisioned.
So we kept improving it.
The next version was much larger.
Then another.
And another.
Eventually Sober Side Up became a complete recovery platform with assessments, journals, daily recovery tasks, lessons, resources, progress tracking, avatars, achievements, recovery timelines, personalized recommendations, and many other features built around the Seven Standards framework.
Along the way I also founded the Sober Side Up nonprofit organization, wrote additional books, created facilitator lessons, held in-person recovery meetings, built a website, developed community resources, and continued refining everything based on real feedback from people in recovery.
One day, while scrolling Facebook, I saw a short video about Codex. I took a screenshot and sent it to ChatGPT asking what it was and whether it could help with Sober Side Up.
That conversation changed everything.
ChatGPT explained what Codex could do and walked me through setting up the OpenAI developer platform, APIs, vector stores, and the additional tools needed to begin building AI-powered features. Because of the memory problems I still experience after my brain aneurysm, I often relied on ChatGPT to help me remember commands, explain technical concepts, and guide me through complicated setup processes that I likely would have struggled to complete on my own.
As the project grew, I realized my Seven Standards framework needed stronger academic references and citations. ChatGPT suggested using Codex to help organize and add citations to research that had already influenced the framework.
The result was a far more polished and professionally documented version of the Seven Standards while preserving the original ideas that had been developed through now nearly a year and half of recovery and a life time of lived experience, research, and observation.
Later, OpenAI announced Build Week. I immediately became interested, but there was one problem: I couldn’t simply submit an app I had already built.
So I asked myself another question:
How could AI help people in recovery without replacing human connection?
The answer became Sober Side Up Buddy—an AI recovery companion built around the Seven Standards. Instead of replacing counselors, sponsors, peer support, or treatment, the goal was to provide encouragement, education, accountability, and practical support during the hours between appointments, meetings, and counseling sessions.
Once again, ChatGPT and Codex became my teachers. They helped me understand vector stores, AI architecture, prompt design, application structure, debugging, coding, and deployment. Although I had very little software engineering experience when I started, they enabled me to turn ideas into working software while teaching me throughout the process.
Today, Sober Side Up exists as a nonprofit organization, multiple published books, recovery meetings, educational materials, a functioning mobile application, and now an AI companion designed to support—not replace—people in recovery.
None of this would have happened without the combination of lived experience, determination, thousands of hours of research, and the guidance provided by ChatGPT and Codex.
The ideas came from my experiences in addiction and recovery.
The vision came from seeing a problem that needed a solution.
ChatGPT and Codex helped me learn the skills necessary to bring that vision to life.
I hope Sober Side Up demonstrates what can happen when human experience and artificial intelligence work together—not to replace people, but to empower them to build something that genuinely improves the lives of others.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story.
Sincerely,
Mickey Eugene Rayment II
Founder, Sober Side Up
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