Talk show host Wendy Williams’s announcement that she has been living in a “sober home” for treatment for addiction has brought the struggle to the forefront of addiction recovery.

Williams, who is a New Jersey native with a home in Livingston, took two months off her show, citing health issues. She recently returned and announced on Tuesday’s show that she now has a 24-hour “sober coach.”

Addiction troubles are all too common in New Jersey.

“I was using from about 12 or 13, I think,” says New Jersey resident Eric McIntire. “I know my first sober birthday was 30 years old.”

McIntire says that he first started with alcohol, marijuana and LSD and then progressed to crack and heroin. He is now in recovery and works at the Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Institute for Prevention and Recovery. He says that support from others is the key to addiction recovery.

“You need somebody to bounce things off of. I don't want to make my own decisions in the beginning. I want to find out if they’re right because I've been in the darkness for so long, that's what will people say,” says McIntire.

Addiction experts say that recovery continues long after treatment.

“Treatment is a vehicle to recovery,” says institute’s vice president Connie Greene. ”But you can be in treatment and not reach recovery. Recovery is a lifelong issue.”

Williams did not specify why she sought treatment. But she has spoken in the past about her years of cocaine use in the 1990s.