Embracing Recovery: Teresa Sands' Journey from Addiction to Advocacy | Episode 514Embracing Recovery: Teresa Sands' Journey from Addiction to Advocacy | Episode 514
The Way Out | A Sobriety & Recovery Podcast
Teresa Sands shares her journey from childhood trauma, grief and heroin use to motherhood, harm reduction advocacy and Narcan at Night in Las Vegas. The conversation focuses on small positive changes, community support and redefining what recovery can look like.
2:13:43•10 Aug 2026
From Grief and Heroin to Narcan at Night: Teresa Sands’ Fierce Recovery
Episode Overview
- Recovery can start with any positive change, from using less to changing how you use, and doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing at first.
- Grief, trauma and codependency can drive substance use just as much as the drugs themselves, so emotional work is vital.
- Harm reduction tools like naloxone, test strips and safer-use strategies save lives and create space for change.
- Community work through groups like Young People in Recovery and events like Narcan at Night helps turn painful history into meaningful service.
- Protecting recovery sometimes means enforcing hard boundaries, even walking away from people you love in order to stay alive and present for your children.
“The life that you know you deserve to have isn't that far out of reach… but you have to be the one to kick that ball.”
What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? Teresa Sands’ appearance on The Way Out podcast shows just how far someone can come from chaos, grief and addiction to meaningful advocacy and leadership. Teresa chats with host Jason about growing up in a music-filled but emotionally closed home, where “what happens here stays here” was the family rule and mental health simply wasn’t discussed.
She shares how childhood trauma, codependency and the death of her first love Casey from an overdose pushed her deeper into opioids, heroin and club drugs, describing grief as her “main vice”. Her story doesn’t shy away from the darkest parts: homelessness, sex work, an abusive and controlling relationship that slid into trafficking, and the agony of losing access to her young son, Epic.
Yet she also shows how small choices add up, from sleeping in motels instead of on the street to white-knuckling early sobriety in a budget suite so she could pass drug tests and see her child again. Teresa explains how harm reduction and community shifted everything.
She now studies for her MSW, works in treatment admissions, leads Young People in Recovery in Nevada, and helps run Narcan at Night in Las Vegas, getting thousands of naloxone kits into bars, casinos and neighbourhoods.
For her, recovery is “any positive change… any change in your day-to-day activity that has improved your life.” This episode is ideal if you’re into real, messy recovery stories with equal parts heartbreak, dark humour and practical action, especially around harm reduction, overdose response and co-parenting in recovery. It might also speak to you if you’ve lost years to grief, love someone in active use, or feel guilty about time away from your kids.
If Teresa can rebuild “a home” with her son and community after all this, what might your next small positive change be?
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