Narratives about challenging topics like addiction and mental illness often unwittingly lean upon tropes and stereotypes. As a result, salacious, exploitative, stigmatizing storylines can emerge. This can make writing about a highly stigmatized subject feel daunting, beset by endless possible missteps. As an author of a memoir about addiction, I have written and spoken about this at great length and have incorporated these topics into a novel. We’ll talk about some of the pitfalls of writing about addiction in narratives (and how to avoid them) and offer exercises and tips for writing a story that honors the complexity of the topic, centering compassion without shying away from the truth. We will also discuss some hurdles to putting these stories out into the world, including contending with reader bias.