Grateful Giving 2025: Featuring Madeleine Zimmerman

Every story starts with a single spark. Meet the people who turned theirs into something brighter—and let their light inspire yours. As part of Moderation Management’s Grateful Giving 2025 series, Clinical Director Madeleine Zimmerman shares her moderation success story—a journey rooted in harm reduction, compassion, and choice.

Growing Up in a Culture of Drinking

I grew up in Wisconsin—the #1 binge-drinking state in the U.S.—where alcohol is woven into almost every gathering. It’s social, cultural, and often generational.

Alcohol has always been complicated. It can bring people together to celebrate, to mourn, to connect—and it can also create distance, tension, and harm. Both can be true at the same time.

A Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

In 2015, I experienced a moment that changed the course of my life. After a night out with friends, I drove when I shouldn’t have and crashed my car. No one was hurt, but I was arrested for operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

It was a painful wake-up call that pushed me to look more honestly at my relationship with alcohol, my environment, and the patterns that had been modeled for me. I chose to take a break from drinking, began therapy, and started to take accountability—not because I was “broken,” but because I wanted to understand myself more fully.

Healing Through Honesty, Not Shame

Still, the aftermath was heavy. I carried deep shame and self-doubt, convinced I had to earn my way back to being a good person. In the beginning, that process was entirely shame-based — I thought feeling awful was proof that I cared. But through therapy and community support, that belief began to shift. My therapist helped me see that shame doesn’t heal; it paralyzes. What actually fosters change is curiosity, compassion, and connection. Over time, I learned to approach myself with honesty instead of judgment—and that shift transformed how I understand growth, accountability, and healing.

How Harm Reduction Shaped My Path

That experience shaped everything that came next. As I grew into my career as a therapist, I became passionate about harm reduction—about helping people explore their relationships with alcohol and other substances in ways that honor autonomy, context, and humanity. I wanted others to have what I had: a therapist who could walk beside them as they chipped away at shame and rebuilt confidence through self-honesty and care.

Finding Moderation Management

That’s what led me to Moderation Management (MM). I was searching for resources I could offer clients who didn’t resonate with the “all-or-nothing” approach that dominates many peer-support and recovery spaces — programs that only talked about abstinence, when that simply isn’t the right or realistic path for everyone.

When I found MM, I immediately recognized a community that shared my personal and professional values: that people deserve options, that change exists on a spectrum, and that moderation is a valid, evidence-informed, and meaningful path toward well-being.

My Role as MM’s First Clinical Director

Today, as MM’s first Clinical Director, I’m focused on strengthening this movement — building a national network of helping professionals and practitioners, expanding our funding opportunities through grants and private donors, and ensuring moderation and harm reduction have a respected and visible place within the broader landscape of health care.

Why I Support Moderation Management During Grateful Giving 2025

Your support makes this possible. When you donate to MM, you’re helping reimagine what “recovery” can mean—expanding the conversation to include curiosity, compassion, and choice.

This November, during Grateful Giving Month, I’m celebrating the community that helped me find the way back to my inner soul. I give back to Moderation Management with gratitude for the freedom, and loving peace, it finally gave me.

Your support helps MM expand harm reduction resources and make moderation a visible, evidence-informed option nationwide.

Will you join me in showing your gratitude?

👉 Donate once: https://moderation.org/donations
💛 Or become a monthly supporter: https://moderation.org/donate-monthly

Your support keeps Moderation Management’s meetings, tools, and compassionate community available to everyone who needs them.