Peer Recovery Coaches in Action

Peer Recovery Coaches in Action

What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? This conversation from the SMART Recovery® Podcast brings together two peer recovery coaches, Elizabeth Myers and Kelsey Pierce from USARA, to show how lived experience can become a lifeline for others. You’ll hear how Elizabeth’s three trips to prison and decades of meth use turned into a career she calls a “dream come true”, as she now runs SMART groups and supports people in Ogden and Weber County.

She talks openly about trauma, relapse, and the shift from just being abstinent to actively rewiring her thinking: planning tiny daily actions, using practical tools, and embracing her past instead of hiding it. Kelsey works inside a jail as a forensic peer recovery coach, running five to seven SMART groups a week. Her story starts with arrest, drug court, and losing custody of her children.

That pain pushed her into treatment, where she became fascinated by how the brain and trauma shape substance use. As she puts it, “Addiction is hereditary, but so is recovery,” and she sees her work as ending family cycles and helping change the culture inside the justice system. The episode focuses on how peer coaching adds something different to formal services: genuine connection, compassion, and people who can sit “on the sidelines” rather than act as enforcers.

Both coaches stress the power of SMART’s science-based tools, the importance of self-respect over momentary feelings, and the idea that recovery can be joyful, practical, and deeply personal. If you’re curious about how real people use their own pasts to help others build a life beyond addiction, this conversation might be exactly the nudge you’ve been waiting for—whose fire could their stories light in you?