Editorial Content Guidelines

Our Web Content Publishing Goal

Our goal is to aid people with addictions on their journey to lasting recovery—and this noble pursuit is woven into the thread of each piece of content we publish. Here’s an in-depth look at how our content, publishing, and medical review team members work together to craft high-quality, factually accurate, and relevant content for you.

Content Guided by Integrity & Compassion

Addiction treatment can be both life-changing and life-saving. We at AddictionHelp.com recognize the importance of the content we are putting out into the world and the hefty job it has to do.

Because our content often reaches people who are greatly in need of help, we have a duty to provide essential content that is reliable to the very best of our ability

Our content-integrity approach includes: 

Comprehensive Research

We only include content on our website that can be backed by verifiable research, from peer-reviewed journals to medical publications, educational institutions, and governmental findings.

Writers and editors spend time carefully scouring, fact-checking, and cross-referencing information during the writing and editorial process.

Expert Reviews

Each webpage or blog post is factually accurate before we publish it. But to ensure we adhere to the most up-to-date medical information, we have medical experts review our pages before publication.

Our medical reviewers provide a sharp, educated eye for all content to ensure the greatest level of accuracy before published pages reach our site visitors.

Checks and Balances

Our multifaceted team means each page we publish reaches at least four people before it goes live. This means you can rest assured you are reviewing information that is the most recent, correct, and relevant information for any given topic.

We also update our content regularly, switching out outdated information with new research findings and current statistics to uphold high-level content standards.

Our Content Creation Process

Our content process moves through several phases, from topic selection, research, writing, editing, optimizing, medical reviewing, quality control, and finally, publishing.

During each phase of the process, we weigh several considerations to ensure each page works toward driving our goal of helping people find lasting addiction recovery.

The following considerations are some of the most important during our content process.

Meticulous Topic Selection

The informational content on AddictionHelp.com begins with selecting relevant, timely topics for our audience. We understand that we can’t cover every addiction and recovery-related topic, so we aim to cover topics that can help as many people as possible.

And, with careful content planning, we try to cover topics in a way that answers as many questions as possible for anyone researching the topic.

From recovery resources to addiction and addiction treatment information, current addiction statistics, and even addiction-newsworthy topics, we provide information on many important topics in the recovery realm.

Relying on Solid Sources

Our commitment to quality information extends to the resources we use to research topics and stay up-to-date on the latest discoveries in addiction medicine.

As a rule of thumb, our primary resources are trusted sites developed by government institutions, scientific organizations, and other trusted documentation, such as scientific papers on addiction-related topics.

While we may branch out to additional sources to continue learning and growing our knowledge base, we base our key findings on proven, reliable, trustworthy organizations.

Some of our key sources and citations include:

• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) | samhsa.gov
• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) | nida.nih.gov
• National Institute of Health (NIH) | nih.gov
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) | cdc.gov
• Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) | dea.gov
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) | niaaa.nih.gov

Embracing Equity and Inclusion

Addictions can affect people from all walks of life, so we tailor our content for people who may fit into multiple groups and demographics.

Whether you are part of a racial minority, faith community, the LGBTQ+ community, a high-level executive job, a celebrity, a teen, or a senior citizen, we can provide helpful recovery resources and information.

Reducing Addiction Stigma

For many years, seeking treatment for a drug or alcohol addiction has been viewed as a negative thing to do.

Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that people who receive substance abuse treatment for at least 90 days have a greater chance of long-term recovery than those who don’t.

The AddictionHelp.com editorial team works hard to remove the stigma surrounding addiction and treatment.

We provide education on the disease of addiction, straightforward information about substance use disorders as legitimate medical conditions, and non-judgmental advocacy and support.

All of our content is aimed toward this purpose, down to the language we choose to include and how we refer to addiction.

If we can remove stigma, we can—hopefully—help more people understand the disease of addiction, why it requires treatment, and where to seek treatment.

Choosing Conscious Language

In removing stigma, AddictionHelp.com is conscious of our language choices. We write content from a place of empathy, as many of us are in recovery, know someone in recovery, or have a loved one battling addiction.

We make content that we would write for our loved ones and hope to help the people seeking help for themselves or a loved one feel empowered and supported in doing so.

Providing Recovery Resources

AddictionHelp.com is, first and foremost, a resource hub for people with addictions and their loved ones. Therefore, the content we provide on recovery resources is perhaps the most important content we publish.

Treatment, addiction education, support groups, mental health care, and more information can be found on our website, with much more to come.

It is our fervent hope to connect as many people as possible with lifesaving recovery resources because, in the words of one of our founders, “Even one life is worth saving.”

Our Content Editorial Team

AddictionHelp.com’s content strategy is led by recovering addict Chris Carberg and board-certified addiction specialist Dr. Kent Hoffman, DO. Content production is managed by Jessica Miller, who is involved in its production daily, helping drive its recovery-forward goals.

Along the way, they brought on board many content professionals specializing in writing, researching, editing, and optimizing.

Learn more about the team behind the carefully curated content of AddictionHelp.com.