<p>Recovery research has mainly focused on optimistic, progress oriented narratives, yet such accounts often overlook experiences in which recovery is hindered rather than supported. This study examines non‑recovery stories as told by people with lived experience of recovery from mental health challenges and/or substance use in Norway. The aim was to explore how participants describe situations hindering recovery, and to develop knowledge about barriers embedded in everyday service encounters and wider welfare arrangements. The article draws on qualitative data collected in 2019 through focus groups, paired and individual interviews with a total of 29 participants. A reflexive thematic analysis was conducted. For the purposes of this paper, we selectively analysed interview segments in which participants described non‑recovery situations. Three overarching themes were developed. The first captures how medication was frequently prioritised over listening, dialogue and relational continuity. The second theme concerns encounters with professionals characterised as distant, unavailable or procedural, “like talking to a wall”, which participants experienced as invalidating and as barriers to trust, recognition and engagement. The third theme highlights how rigid welfare structures, bureaucratic demands, unstable housing and economic precarity shaped everyday life conditions, producing cycles of discontinuity, insecurity and abandonment that undermined recovery. The findings show that recovery is shaped as much by social, organisational and material environments as by individual capacities or clinical interventions. Attending to non‑recovery stories broadens understandings of recovery and underscores the need for service models that address the relational and structural conditions within which recovery is expected to unfold.</p>