\“absinthe bourgeois chat noir” by Chuck Staley/

*an alcoholic’s guide to blockchain 1: “hayver”*

There’s that joke going around about all new apps and start-ups: “So,” asks your any-given-oversaturated-hipster, “this is like, Uber for… ?” Everything should be as accessible as the casual taxi replacement, and as precarious, a text away from either complete failure of the business model, into the bin with the other tinfoil unicorns, or sudden stratospheric rise to how-did-we-live-without-it status.

Arguably, since the surging sales of Alexa, the google home device, it’s “So…this is like, Alexa, for…?” Alexa, the gynoid nursemaid of the house, can likely keep better track of your life than you do, and if synced to a Fitbit, your body as well.

Hayver is a new app aiming at “becoming Alexa for…” namely drug and alcohol recovery. The app, which Hayver co-founder John. M. Copenhaver, M.D, describes as “a better chance of staying in recovery,” is modelled on a branched-out version of the sponsoring aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had the idea after his own experience, falling behind in recovery when he was no longer able to participate in a physician’s monitoring program in which he was regularly monitored by random drug and alcohol screens. “This is peer to peer accountability,” Copenhaver explains, “with no legal stipulations involved whatsoever.” The app creates a “peer group,” a closed circle of up to twenty participants per circle, a peer network that everyone is required to check in with daily. This can consist of friends and family as well as strangers in the same situation. Each day, they see a counter for the number of days they’ve been sober, along with status reports on reward points achieved in the system.

Incentivization is nothing new, but Hayver differs from traditional recovery methods in that it is commodified not just socially but in cold, hard crypto-cash. Rewards, in the system, consist primarily of the Duitcoin, a cryptocurrency made up by and only available to users of Hayver. Hayver’s commitment to cryptocurrencies is total: Duitcoin is issued using Ethereum, a Blockchain-based distributed computing platform that allows its “miners” to earn “Ether,” its own crypto token, along its own blockchain, instead of Bitcoin. Duitcoins, which Copenhaver describes colourfully as a concept more than a monetary unit, are aspirationally “similar to the pink ribbons…” used, “to bring breast cancer out of the shadows…a symbol of courage to raise awareness of removing the social stigma for people suffering from,” what he describes as a mental illness.

Duitcoins are also a closed circuit: they can only be used in-app to purchase tools such as breathalyzers and other services from Hayver, like monitoring subscriptions.

Hayver takes the principle of social accountability integral to systems like A.A, however, and dials it up to eleven. Each user’s progress is stored on the blockchain for public consumption. Randomly, users are chosen to undergo urine sample screenings using a home testing kit and are obliged to enter this data into their results for display. Crucially, anyone in the group can target any other member by ordering an anonymous check. Meant to be a measure of care, a self-regulating group with this ability that is not being monitored by a professional or an outside source runs the faint risk of uneven and even accidental targeting. And, with users possibly overspending Duitcoins on home kits in such a scenario, however unlikely, the incentive nature of the Duitcoin itself comes into question.

As well, by distancing the recovery process from in-person group work and practical, philosophical and spiritual conversations around addiction and lifestyle, Hayver runs the risk of reducing a complex condition with many delicate psychological factors determining success or failure to another kind of technological filter bubble, one that is in the end too small to fit into an expanding personal journey. Like Tumblr, Hayver positions you “home” with a dashboard, and like Facebook, it keeps the visibility of your in-platform identity within a small community dependent on keeping up your levels of interaction. Because daily check-ins are so important in Hayver, if you start to fall behind, the anti-reward is arguably likely to breed a sense of hopelessness, as even three days gone can cast a spell of impending failure.

Group work and facility treatment is a particularly important part of the puzzle: more costly inpatient and residential treatments yield higher sustainability, with twenty-one percent of addicts remaining sober five years after undergoing physically interactive inpatient treatment. Meanwhile, eighteen and seventeen percent of those relying on outpatient drug-free programs, and detox, respectively, remain sober in the same time frame. This doesn’t seem like very much of a difference until you consider that seventy-three percent of patients undergoing inpatient treatment complete it, while only forty-three percent undergoing outpatient treatment will do the same. Successful completion of a comprehensive treatment program, whether or not the patient relapses in five years, will be a determining factor in whether or not the patient will return to treatment and avoid even more dire consequences.

As for the results? Hayver users who check in daily ninety percent of the time do not relapse while using the service; however, those who fail to check in ninety percent of the time have all experienced at least one episode of relapse. “Alexa for addiction” might not be ready to move into your home-cloud just yet...