Why does Outlaw Grace charge a fee?

The performance is intentionally stripped down. The presentation is not. We bring professional gear, professional sound, and experienced performers who understand the responsibility of entering a treatment environment.

The fee is paid by the facility so clients can access the experience at no cost whenever possible.

Outlaw Grace is built on lived experience. Sustaining this work allows us to continue serving recovery communities while providing our writers with a full-time career. 

What is the intended clinical or recovery support value of the event?

Outlaw Grace exists to support the transition from treatment to everyday life by introducing clients to a welcoming, recovery-centered community outside the clinical setting. 

The event is not therapy and does not replace a facility’s treatment model. Its value is in reinforcing protective recovery factors that treatment teams already work to build: social connection, recovery identity, and continued engagement after discharge. 

Outlaw Grace creates pathways for ongoing sober community through offerings such as running/walking groups, a nonreligious recovery choir, and sober writer’s rounds for musicians. All events and activities are free unless stated otherwise. New offerings will continue to be added based on need, capacity, and what meaningfully supports sober connection. 

Our goal is to help clients see recovery not only as something they complete in treatment, but as a life they can continue afterwards. 

How does Outlaw Grace support treatment without becoming treatment?

We are not a clinical program. We do not diagnose, process trauma, offer clinical advice, challenge a client’s care plan, or present ourselves as part of the treatment team. 

Our role begins where clinical treatment often cannot fully reach by giving clients a credible glimpse of sober community beyond treatment. 

Treatment can prepare people for recovery, but clients still have to imagine life outside its walls. Outlaw Grace helps make that life visible by connecting recovery with music, lived experience, and belonging. 

• What makes this appropriate for a clinical setting rather than simply a powerful personal performance?

Outlaw Grace is appropriate for clinical settings because the presentation is intentionally structured to reduce performance distance and center the recovery content inside the music. 

We are musicians. That is our job. We are people living in sobriety while doing the work we are trained to do writing, performing, and communicating through music. In that sense, the event does not present sobriety as a separate identity clients must perform. It presents sobriety as something that can EXIST inside ordinary life. 

The presentation is stripped down by design, so the focus stays on the songs and the emotional material inside them. Clients are given space to reflect on themes they may recognize. 

RECOVERY PHILOSOPHY

Is Outlaw Grace a 12 step program?

No. 

We respect 12 Step recovery and recognize it is a meaningful pathway for many people. However, Outlaw Grace does not teach the Steps, interpret the Steps, require identification with the 12 Step language, or present 12 Step participation as a condition of recovery. 

Is Outlaw Grace anti-12 Step?

No. We are neither anti nor exclusively 12 Step. 

We do not position one recovery pathway as superior to another. Many people recover through 12 Step programs. Many people recover through clinical care, faith communities, therapy, peer support and many other methods. 

Outlaw Grace does not argue with any pathway that helps a person stay alive, connected, and moving towards long-term recovery. 

Does Outlaw Grace support the treatment center’s recovery model or promote its specific program?

Outlaw Grace respects the clinical model and recovery language of each facility we serve. We can adapt tone and language to support the center’s client population and therapeutic goals.

At the same time, Outlaw Grace is not a promotional arm of the treatment center. We do not recruit or navigate clients into a specific recovery pathway or endorse any one model as the only valid path.

How do you make sure clients do not hear your personal pathway(s) as the only valid way to recover?

We are explicit that our stories are personal. We do not tell clients to recover the way we recovered. We use our stories to create identification and possibility, while making clear that each client’s recovery plan belongs to them and their treatment team. 

How do you speak to clients who are skeptical, court-mandated, ambivalent, medication-assisted, nonreligious, or resistant to recovery culture?

With grace, honesty, and respect- without backing down from the reality of addiction. 

Outlaw Grace does not shame clients for the aforementioned conditions and mindsets. Those responses are common. Many people enter treatment guarded, angry, exhausted and suspicious recovery is even possible for them. In fact, this was our founder’s direct experience. Outlaw Grace was built with that reality in mind. 

We do not treat resistance as failure. 

At the same time, we do not soften the truth to make addiction easier to look at. The Outlaw Grace presentation is direct about consequences, grief, loss, shame, and the work required after treatment. 

EMOTIONAL SAFETY 

What emotionally intense subjects may come up during the songs, stories, or Q&A?

The material may focus on addiction, relapse, shame, grief, family damage, near-death experience, treatment, lack of access to treatment, religious abuse, and life after discharge. 

We do not use graphic detail, shock language or dramatic storytelling for effect. The purpose is not in totensify the room. 

How do you avoid glamorizing addiction and trauma?

We do not present addiction as exciting or heroic. The stories are told through the lens of consequence, loss, and recovery. The focus is on what it cost, what changed, and what life in sobriety requires. 

What happens if a client becomes visibly distressed, triggered, angry, or overwhelmed?

The facility’s staff takes the lead, in every case. 

In that scenario, we pause, lower intensity, redirect, or stop as needed. Staff may check in with the client, step outside with them, or remove them from the situation according to facility protocol. 

We do not confront, diagnose, or publicly focus attention on the client. 

Does the event include profanity? 

Yes, the Outlaw Grace presentation may include profanity. It is not used for shock value, but the presentation is built around plain speech. Facilities should expect adult language consistent with the subject matter. 

• Can the language, humor or stories be adjusted for our population? 

Not substantially. We can discuss general tone and other clinical considerations beforehand, but if a facility requires a controlled, profanity-free presentation, Outlaw Grace may not be the best fit. 

What topics are off-limits or handled with care? 

Outlaw Grace handles sexual assault, domestic abuse, religious abuse, suicidal ideation, and related trauma with utmost care. 

These subjects may exist within a performer's lived experience or music, but they are not treated as open processing topics during the presentation. 

If these topics arise during Q&A and become emotionally escalated, we defer to the facility's treatment team. 

•  Can the facility preview themes, music and content beforehand? 

Yes. The music used in the Outlaw Grace presentation is publicly available, and video on our website gives facilities a clear sense of tone and presentation style before booking