Recovery support, always within reach
Buoy is an AI recovery coach for people navigating addiction. It listens without judgment, helps you understand your patterns, and stays close when you need it most.
Recovery doesn't happen in a straight line — and the moments that test you most rarely arrive on schedule. They come at 11pm on a Tuesday. After a hard conversation. In the car on the way home from somewhere you didn't expect.
Buoy is there. Not to replace your sponsor, your therapist, or your community. But to be the thing you reach for before the moment gets away from you — the voice that helps you slow down, think it through, and find your way back.
What Buoy offers
Crisis check-in for hard moments. Daily check-in for the everyday. Reflection for going deeper. You choose the mode. Buoy calibrates to meet you there.
Over time, Buoy helps you understand what triggers you — not just the surface event, but what's underneath it. Your insights stay yours, confirmed by you, built conversation by conversation.
Add a sponsor, a buddy, a trusted friend. You decide what Buoy shares and when. If you're in crisis and want someone to know, we make that one tap away.
Getting started
A few questions at the start: what you're working on, what approaches resonate, who you want in your corner. All optional. All yours to change.
Open a crisis check-in, a daily check-in, or a reflection. Talk like you would with someone you trust. Buoy listens, asks good questions, and stays with you.
As you talk, Buoy notices patterns and asks if you'd like to save them. Your triggers, your insights, your recovery history — always yours, always editable.
Your path
"There's no single right way to recover. Buoy doesn't have one opinion about yours."
From the Buoy guiding principles
Recovery is not one thing. It's abstinence for some and moderation management for others. It's medication-assisted treatment, and SMART Recovery, and 12-step, and finding your own way through. It changes over time. It looks different for different substances and different people.
Buoy supports all of it — without judgment, without a preferred outcome. You tell us what path you're on. We support you on it.
One day at a time. Buoy supports the steps, holds your milestones, and knows when to say "have you talked to your sponsor about this?"
Meeting yourself where you are. Buoy helps you track patterns, reduce consequences, and make safer choices — without shame about where you're starting.
Working toward controlled use. Buoy helps you track, reflect, and notice when the plan is or isn't holding.
Naltrexone, buprenorphine, methadone — evidence-based and valid. Buoy treats MAT as the legitimate medical treatment it is.
CBT-based, secular, self-directed. Buoy speaks this language fluently and won't push a higher power on you.
That's a complete answer. Buoy will follow your lead and help you explore what resonates — without rushing you to a label.
Human support
AI is good at being present. But some moments need a person — your sponsor, a trusted friend, someone who knows you. Buoy makes it easy to loop them in, on your terms.
Each contact can be configured independently. They receive a brief, private message — never the contents of your conversation.
Buoy does not sell your data, run ads, or share what you say with third parties. Your conversations are used for one thing: supporting you.
Chat content is automatically deleted after 30 days. What stays longer — your trigger patterns, your recovery history, your profile — is there because you put it there, and you can delete it any time.
Your messages are not used to train AI models. What you share in Buoy stays in Buoy.
Crisis notifications go only to contacts you've added, and only using preferences you've set. Contacts must opt in. The content of your conversations is never shared — only a brief, templated message that you need support.
Close your account and everything goes with it — messages, profile, history, contact data. No retention, no residue.
From beta users
“My hardest moments are always late at night, like 2am. It’s tough to call or text anyone that late. Those are the moments when Buoy comes through.”
“Relapse is a vicious cycle for me because I get isolated fast. I use the Buoy app when I need a leg up to get out of that and back to a place where I can talk to people again.”
“It’s a great tool. By talking to Buoy, I’ve started to understand my addictive tendencies much better. I use it alongside therapy and Naltrexone.”
Buoy is free to start, works on any web browser, and is ready whenever you are — which might be right now.