*Names have been changed to protect privacy.*

The hiring manager asked if I was "comfortable disclosing" my history during the background check phase of the interview.

I was applying for a position in social services — helping people navigate housing assistance, employment programs, the kind of work where you're supposed to meet people where they are. I'd been in recovery for four years. I had my degree. I had volunteer experience. I had a letter of reference from my counselor. And I had a felony conviction on my record.

I appreciated that he asked before assuming anything. Most don't. Most see the record and the application gets quietly moved aside.

I told him yes, I was comfortable disclosing, because I'd learned that lying about it — or just not mentioning it — creates a different kind of problem. It creates a version of me that exists only on good days, in front of the right people, in controlled circumstances. I'd spent enough time being that version.

I got the job. I was hired specifically because of the conviction, not in spite of it, because my supervisor understood that people with lived experience in addiction and the criminal system are exactly the right people to help other people navigate it.

But not every employer has that supervisor's understanding.

I have friends in recovery who've been passed over for positions because of history. I've watched people with better qualifications than mine get told "we went another direction" after the background check came back. I've watched the doors narrow — not because of job performance, but because of how society had decided to label them.

This isn't an argument for erasing consequences or suggesting that recovery should guarantee access to every opportunity. It's an acknowledgment that people in recovery are already living with consequences. The question is whether we create additional structural consequences that make it harder to stay employed, to build stability, to prove that what we're working toward is real.

I keep this job. I'm good at it. And I think about the version of me that doesn't get hired, that has to work off-books or takes any position, that gets pushed closer to the edge because legitimate opportunities keep closing.

I think about how precarity is an addiction relapse risk.

I think about how we could make this different.

Right now, I'm the lucky version of the story. I got to tell it on my own terms. But most people don't get that choice.