Contact Info
When Silence Stopped Being an Option
In 2010, a series of murders involving women and children whose contact with their attackers began in court-ordered AA meetings forced Monica to look more closely at a system she had long questioned. What she found wasn't isolated. It was a pattern — and the institutional response to scrutiny made the problem undeniable.
Rather than look away, Monica spent years investigating, documenting, and building the case that vulnerable people deserve transparency, not just tradition.
Monica and Darlene, advocate for RAINN
Recovery Deserves Better Than One Answer
Monica's work doesn't argue against recovery — it argues for more of it. More options, more honesty, and more respect for the science that exists beyond the dominant narrative.
She advocates for evidence-based alternatives including SMART Recovery, harm reduction, trauma-informed care, medication-assisted treatment, and emerging research in psychedelic-assisted therapy under clinical supervision. Her position is clear: people deserve accurate information and real choices — not a single approved path enforced by institutions resistant to accountability.
She also pays close attention to language. Terms like alcoholic or addict, repeated indefinitely, can lock people into static self-concepts that contradict what modern neuroscience and trauma research actually show. Behavior exists on a spectrum. People are capable of change. The words used around them should reflect that.
The Work
Today Monica channels that conviction into multiple platforms. Her podcast Safe Recovery brings together survivors, researchers, and independent voices for honest conversations about addiction and healing outside the mainstream. Her documentary The 13th Step exposed predatory behavior inside AA and the institutions that enabled it. And her forthcoming podcast Deprogramming Minds expands the lens — exploring how institutions, belief systems, and dominant narratives shape behavior far beyond the recovery space.
She also speaks. On stages, panels, and summits, Monica brings the same unfiltered clarity to live audiences — helping people think more critically about the systems and stories they've inherited.
About Monica
Monica Richardson has spent decades doing what most people are quietly discouraged from doing — asking better questions.
Shaped by Experience. Driven by Evidence.
Monica's path into advocacy wasn't academic — it was lived. Her early experiences gave her a firsthand understanding of what it means to navigate systems that claim to help while offering little room for questions. When she eventually found her way through, it wasn't by surrendering her judgment. It was by reclaiming it.
That experience became the foundation of a lifelong commitment to examining the narratives handed to people at their most vulnerable — in courtrooms, treatment facilities, and recovery spaces — and asking whether those narratives actually serve them.