About
About Steady Bearing
An independent educational library about getting help for alcohol and drug problems and staying well, written by the editors and built on public sources.
People who are thinking about treatment, who have started it or who are standing next to someone who has often meet a wall of jargon: therapy names, medicine names, acronyms, and advice that contradicts itself. Steady Bearing exists to lay that material out plainly, in an order that follows the way many people move through care, and to show where each statement comes from.
What this library is
The library is arranged as a passage in five legs: reaching out, steadying through withdrawal and medicines, working on it with therapy, staying well and the people and conditions that sit alongside. Each page explains one subject, says what public health bodies and published reviews report about it, and lists its sources. Where the evidence is thin, the page says so.
Independent, and not a service
Steady Bearing is an independent publication run by its editors. It is not a treatment provider, a clinic, a support group or a fellowship. It runs no meetings or events, takes no calls, offers no counseling, makes no referrals and recommends no programs. It is not affiliated with any treatment center, mutual-help group, professional body, company or government agency, and it does not accept payment to feature anything.
The editors do not write about their own recoveries, treatment or professional experience, and there are no personal stories or testimonials here. The library speaks as a publication, and every claim should stand on a named public source.
What it cannot do
Nothing here is medical advice. A qualified clinician who knows a person's history and circumstances has the final word on what fits them, and some situations, such as alcohol or sedative withdrawal, can be dangerous without medical supervision. For urgent help in the United States, SAMHSA's National Helpline (1-800-662-HELP, or 1-800-662-4357) is a free, confidential treatment referral and information service; it does not provide counseling. SAMHSA describes the service on its own site.
How it is made
Pages are drafted from sources the editors have opened and read, mainly national health agencies, professional bodies and peer-reviewed reviews. The method page explains how sources are chosen, how dates are handled and how corrections work. If a page is wrong or out of date, the contact page says how to tell the editors.