Who this is for
RowGress is for adults questioning the role of alcohol in their lives without having decided that alcohol is the problem. It exists because the gap between "I drink normally" and "I have a drinking problem" deserves better tools and better writing than it has been given.
The audience is not in formal recovery. The audience is not looking for a wellness brand to tell them how to feel. The audience is somewhere in the middle, paying attention, deciding what to do.
Who is building this
RowGress is built by one person, who quit drinking. Most of what is on this site started as notes that person wished someone had handed them earlier: what the first weeks actually feel like, what the research actually says, what changes and what does not. The site is published without a personal byline on purpose; a site that promises you anonymity should be comfortable keeping its own.
The first-person essays describe the founder's own experience and are labeled as such. The research pieces describe what cessation studies say, and they cite their sources. The founder is not a doctor, a therapist, or a treatment professional, and nothing here pretends otherwise. How every page gets written and checked is documented on the editorial standards page.
There is no funding behind this and no investor pressure. The site is currently free, with no account and no ads, and nothing you enter is ever sold.
What the tools do
The tools are the core of the site. Set a start date and the day counter counts every day since. The check-in tracker logs mood, sleep, and exercise in under a minute a day. The calculator shows what you have gotten back in money, hours, and drinks not consumed. The timeline shows what typically changes in the body and mind, week by week, and where you are on it.
Everything runs without a signup. The data lives in your browser and in an anonymous database row that knows nothing about you except a random identifier. You can delete all of it, any time, from the privacy page. The site uses Google Analytics for aggregate, anonymous traffic measurement, and nothing else; the privacy policy says exactly what is collected, which is very little.
How the writing works
Articles on RowGress are educational only. They describe what cessation research says, what lived experience reports, and what the relationship between the two looks like. They do not give medical advice. They acknowledge individual variation. They do not promise outcomes.
The supplement research section follows the same rules with extra strictness: every page reports what published research says about a supplement people ask about in early sobriety, grades the strength of that evidence honestly, cites every claim, and sells nothing. No brands, no affiliate links, no recommendations. If the evidence for something is thin, the page says so.
When research is cited, it is described accurately and unromantically. When personal experience is offered, it is labeled as personal experience. The line between the two is kept clean.
What this is not
RowGress is not a treatment program. It is not a substitute for professional help. It is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous, SMART Recovery, or any other recovery framework, though it respects all of them.
It is not a community. There are no comments, no profiles, no forums. If you want a community, find one. RowGress is a set of tools and a publication.
It does not do leaderboards, streaks-as-shame, or any mechanic that punishes a reset. If you change your start date, the counter starts counting again. That is the entire transaction.
Contact
Questions about the site, the writing, or the data practices: hello@rowgress.com.
Press and partnerships: partnerships@rowgress.com. Support: support@rowgress.com. Responses are not always fast, but they are always genuine.