Design for Recovery Sober Living Scholarship Opportunity

Our Annual College Scholarship
Are you a college student whose life has been impacted by addiction? You’re not alone.

For most people, college is a period of their lives during which they experiment with drugs and alcohol. However, this is also the time when many people develop substance use disorders. Given how normalized alcohol and drug use is on many college campuses, it is no surprise that college students are at a high risk for addiction.

Design for Recovery is a sober living home for men located in West Los Angeles. We help young men recover from addiction and rebuild their lives. Our mission extends to the larger community — even individuals who are not residents of our sober living home. It is our goal to support anyone who has been affected by addiction in any way. We believe that learning and recovering from substance use disorders is possible when people come together and support each other.

We are offering a $1000 scholarship to college students who are majoring in any field. If you have been affected by addiction, we want to hear your story. Send us a 500-1000 word story about your addiction experience by October 25, 2021. We want to know how addiction has affected your life, how it has affected other people in your life, and the steps you’ve taken to recover and rebuild your life in the aftermath of addiction.

Your story can be about any kind of addiction. Whether you struggled with prescription opioids, heroin, alcohol, cocaine, or sleeping pills, your story can have a profound impact on others. How did you free yourself from the vicious cycle of addiction? What challenges did you face? What made you eventually decide to get help? Did you attend a sober living home? How do you stay sober today, and what kind of challenges do you face as a sober person in recovery? One of the best things we can do to stay sober is to share our stories. Our experiences, strength, and hope are likely to help the countless others who are suffering from addiction and feeling hopeless.

We are interested in all kinds of stories related to addiction. You don’t have to have suffered from an addiction yourself. At Design for Recovery, we recognize that substance use disorders make an impact on many people — not just the one who is abusing alcohol and drugs. In fact, it is often close friends and family members who suffer most. There is nothing harder than watching someone you love harm themselves repeatedly.

If someone in your life has suffered from a substance use disorder, there is a lot you can shed light on. How did their addiction affect you? What does it mean to love an addicted person in a healthy way? What kind of boundaries did you set — or fail to set? How did you overcome the challenges? Did they recover? Did you play a role in their recovery? How has your experience with a loved ones addiction changed how you live your own life? We want to hear your answers to these questions.

Why are we offering this $1000 scholarship?
At Design for Recovery, we believe that education is one of the best ways for a person to rebuild their life while recovering from a substance use disorder. College is a vital tool for enriching one’s mind, jumpstarting a new career, and building a strong social support system. But we also recognize that college can feel triggering or difficult to people who are in early recovery. We aim to support students who are working hard to do what it takes to get an education and stay sober. By lending students a helping hand, we hope to be an important part of this process.

Please send in your stories by October 25, 2021. Design for Recovery will read through each 500-1000 word story and award one student the scholarship by December 1, 2021. E-mail all submissions to scholarship@designforrecovery.com.