Sober Coach: Defined

A Sober Coach fills the gap between the indigenous recovering community (12-Step meetings, therapists, churches, etc.) and residential treatment facilities.

We provide a level of accountability that the indigenous recovering community cannot be expected to provide...and a connection to the client in their own living environment that treatment programs are simply unable to offer.

At Sober Champion, each of our coaches has at least five years of continuous abstinence.

We understand the array of barriers that prevent addicts from defining, joining, and remaining in healthy environments. These barriers may be internal to the addict (low motivation or emotional, medical, mental or spiritual problems). There may also be external barriers that prevent addicts from safely meeting their needs related to housing, employment, nutrition, socialization, and transportation.

In addition to specialized, individualized goal-setting and skill-building, a Sober Coach can often provide an invaluable service for those resistant to remaining abstinent from drugs and/or alcohol, but who must do so due to legal, medical, family or contractual obligations.

Working with other treatment professionals, the Sober Coach determines client needs, defines boundaries, and explores how community, family, and business supports can best be utilized to maintain ongoing recovery. 

The Sober Coach understands the relationships between these various barriers to the client’s recovery.

The Sober Coach collaboratively develops a plan of action to address these barriers. Our Sober Coaches have a working knowledge of community resources that help remove barriers – and strong personal experience in having such barriers removed. We have a great network of these resources and their various strengths and weaknesses.

An important part of our job is to match the client with the best resource for their individual barriers and needs. We provide accountability for the client to follow through with all areas of the plan of action.

• If you're freshly out of treatment or detox, what are you supposed to do to protect the investment you have made in yourself?

• Structuring daily activities can be a lot harder than one might anticipate.

• Peace of mind, fun and happiness are hard to achieve in recovery without the necessary life skills. A Sober Coach helps you build those.

• A Sober Coach helps support the individual in catching up with missed time and building up life skills which were either forgotten or never learned.

• Adolescents in early recovery benefit greatly from having a professional relationship outside the 12-Step rooms - especially when that someone is a Sober Coach who has been there before.

Individual goals are set weekly with each person to fit his/her personal strengths and challenges. An empowerment approach is used to build self-esteem and confidence.

A Sober Coach works with individuals at all stages of recovery, whether the person is leaving residential treatment, currently in sober living, in an outpatient/day-patient program, in their own home, in the process of transitioning from sober living/treatment to their own home, or recently relapsed.

We initially meet with the client 3 times per week for one-hour sessions, (frequency & length of sessions are evaluated monthly and/or bi-monthly). Meeting locations will vary depending on where the client is in their recovery, and what the person is currently working on. In addition, the sober coach is on-call by phone 24 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week. This service alone can help prevent relapses and supports individuals with crises that come up in between sessions.