About
Peer support. Music. Not a gimmick.
Swift Steps® is healing together, one era at a time. Founded and run by a Certified Peer Specialist, open to every pathway and built around the idea that belonging comes first.
What this is
And what it isn't.
Peer support, not treatment.
Founded and run by a Certified Peer Specialist with lived experience. Nobody here is your clinician, and we'll tell you when a clinician is who you need.
All pathways, one room.
Abstinence, moderation, harm reduction, medication, therapy, none of the above. Sober curious is enough.
Music is the way in.
Twelve eras give the year a shape. Each one is a feeling people in recovery already know by heart: courage, heartbreak, boundaries, grief.
Belonging is the point.
The app is open every day. Meetings happen every day. Listening counts. Nobody has to introduce themselves as anything.
Who we're for
Everyone's welcome.
Swift Steps® is queer owned and women owned. Queer, trans, BIPOC, neurodivergent, every pathway, every era. Human rights aren't up for debate here. You don't have to explain yourself to be in the room.
Camera off is fine · fidgeting is fine · leaving early is fine
The loop
You don't graduate. You deepen.
When we finish era twelve we do not stop. We loop back to Debut. Recovery is not a line you cross. It is a circle you keep walking.
- 01DebutBeginning
- 02FearlessCourage
- 03Speak NowVoice
- 04RedHeartbreak
- 051989Identity
- 06reputationBoundaries
- 07LoverSelf compassion
- 08folklore & evermoreGrief
- 09MidnightsHonesty
- 10TTPDRenewal
- 11ShowgirlCelebration
Why it works
The evidence for peer support.
Swift Steps® is peer support with music as the way in. Both halves have a research record. Here's the honest version of it.
Peer recovery support · 2019
Lived experience helps people stay connected to care.
A systematic review from the Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital found that peer recovery support services showed positive results on reduced substance use and relapse, better relationships with treatment providers, higher treatment retention and greater satisfaction, while noting the studies varied in rigor.
Eddie et al., Frontiers in Psychology →Peer recovery support · updated review
The evidence has firmed up on engagement and retention.
The same team's updated review of 28 multi-group studies covering more than 12,000 people concluded that the evidence has coalesced around peer support improving treatment engagement and retention, with early but not yet conclusive signs of better substance use outcomes.
Eddie et al., systematic review →Music · 2017
Music based work moves the things that keep people in the room.
A systematic review of 40 studies found music therapy and music based interventions had beneficial effects on emotion, motivation, participation, locus of control and perceived helpfulness for people in treatment for substance use, with the caveat that results were inconsistent across studies.
Hohmann et al., PLOS ONE →Music · Cochrane
The most careful review agrees, with limits.
A Cochrane review of music therapy for people with substance use disorders reports it can reduce depressive symptoms and increase motivation for treatment and readiness to change, while calling for more and longer studies. That's the right level of confidence, and it's why we say peer support, not treatment.
Ghetti et al., Cochrane Database →Swift Steps® is peer support and community. It is not therapy, treatment or a clinical trial, and it works alongside your care, not instead of it. Read the full science page →
The founder
Julianne Griffin, CPS.
Julianne had been in recovery since 2016 and had spent a lot of it feeling like she was performing it. The rooms that were supposed to help didn't reflect her back. Then she stood in a stadium lot full of strangers trading bracelets and singing the same words, and realized it was the first place in years she hadn't had to explain herself to anyone.
She built Swift Steps® as a queer woman in recovery who spent years in rooms that weren't built for her.
She'd already trained as a Certified Peer Specialist through the Pennsylvania Certification Board. She'd already spent years inside Philadelphia city government managing budgets for corrections, finance and public health. She already wrote The Sober Swiftie for The Sober Curator. Swift Steps® is what happened when those three things ended up in one room.
The first meeting was March 2024. Today it's a community app, a meeting every day of the week, a fifty five week curriculum and a scholarship fund, all peer led and all built on the idea that healing is not one size fits all.
What she believes
Three things.
Belonging comes first.
People don't recover in rooms where they feel judged. They recover where they feel seen.
Any pathway counts.
Abstinence, moderation, harm reduction, medication, therapy. Prescribed medication taken as prescribed is recovery. The question is never which road, only whether you have company on it.
Peers, not saviors.
Lived experience is the credential that matters in the room. Clinicians matter too, and she'll always say so.
The credential
Certified Peer Specialist.
Julianne Griffin holds the Certified Peer Specialist credential through the Pennsylvania Certification Board. A CPS is a person with lived experience of recovery who has completed a state approved training program and certification exam, agrees to a code of ethical conduct, and completes continuing education to keep the credential active. The role is defined by what it is and what it isn't: peer support, alongside clinical care, never in place of it.
Lived experience
In recovery since 2016. Sobriety date September 1. The credential requires it, and the room runs on it.
Trained and certified
Pennsylvania Certification Board approved peer specialist training, certification exam, ethics code, continuing education to maintain.
Boundaried
A CPS does not diagnose, treat, prescribe or assess. Every Swift Steps® member is told that plainly, and every meeting opens with the crisis card.
Background
Fifteen years of running things that have to work.
City of Philadelphia
Budget Officer, Department of Licenses and Inspections. Earlier roles across Corrections, Finance and the Department of Public Health's AIDS Activities Coordinating Office, managing city, state and federal grant budgets for public health programs.
Education
BA in Business Administration, Gwynedd Mercy University, 2014.
Nonprofit boards
Board experience with animal welfare organizations including Your Pitbull and You, Women's Animal Center and Love Four Paws with ACCT Philly.
Writing
Author of The Sober Swiftie, a recurring column on The Sober Curator.
Speaking and press
The Philadelphia Inquirer, NBC10 Philadelphia, Philadelphia Today, Daily Mail, The Sober Curator, The Reyes Reflection and The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. Presenting at the commUNITY Conference, Philadelphia, October 2026.
The organization
Swift Steps® and Healing Through the Eras® are registered trademarks of Blank Space Recovery LLC. Founded March 2024. Legal counsel on intellectual property.
How the rooms are run
The standards every meeting keeps.
- A crisis resource card (988, Crisis Text Line, SAMHSA, Philadelphia crisis and treatment lines) is posted at the start of every meeting and reverified quarterly.
- Facilitators escalate crises to the appropriate service. They do not manage them.
- No diagnosis, treatment, assessment or medical advice, ever, in any room or in the Mastermind app.
- All pathways. Abstinence is not required and nobody's day count is asked.
- What is shared in the room stays in the room. Speaker shares are recorded for the replay vault only with the speaker's consent. The share back is never recorded.
- No attendance is reported to anyone. If a member wants their provider to know they're coming, they say so themselves.
- Non alcoholic spirit and cocktail brands are never sponsored or shown on camera in a recovery meeting.
Before you join
We talk about politics here.
Most of us lean one way and we don't pretend otherwise. Someone in Texas who can't get their hormones needs to be able to say that in their recovery space. Someone whose rights are on the ballot needs to be able to say that too. Human rights aren't a side topic when they decide whether our members are safe.
So if you need a recovery space where politics stays at the door, this isn't it and that's okay. Keep that in mind when deciding if this is the home for your recovery.
In the press
As featured in.
The Philadelphia Inquirer · NBC10 Philadelphia · Philadelphia Today · Daily Mail · The Sober Curator