These coaches can help a client find resources for harm reduction, detox, treatment, family support and education, local or online support groups; or help a client create a change plan to recover on their own.
Recovery coaching is action-oriented with an emphasis on improving present life and reaching future goals.
[4] The coach asks questions and offers reflections to help the client reach clarity and decide what steps to take.
Recovery coaching emphasizes honoring values and making principle-based decisions, creating a clear plan of action, and using current strengths to reach future goals.
This long-term option can begin with treatment discharge and may develop into a coaching relationship that continues for several weeks, months or longer.
When returning home from treatment, the client trades a secure, drug-free environment for a situation where they know there are problems.
This coach will introduce the client to 12-step meetings, guide them past former triggers for their addiction, and support them in developing a recovery plan.
The sober companion helps the client make lifestyle changes in order to experience a better quality of life in the first crucial days after discharge from a treatment center.
Regardless of an addict's choices, working with a family recovery coach may help a spouse, partner, or loved ones avoid the mental obsession that plagues many families affected by addiction and learn to lead sane and productive lives.
[6] The AnchorED program, developed in 2014 with a group of Rhode Island hospitals and the Anchor Community Recovery Center in Providence RI, was launched in an attempt to reduce the instance of accidental opioid overdose by connecting overdose patients with Certified Recovery Coaches in the emergency departments of regional hospitals.
These same coaches offer post-discharge recovery contact and support to the revived patients for a period of weeks.
Through the research of White, David Loveland, Ernest Kurtz, and Mark Saunders, and the efforts funded through Faces and Voices of Recovery, the Fayette Companies, Great Lakes Addiction Technology Transfer Center, the Chestnut Health Systems and many other universities, research on recovery coaching is progressing rapidly.
The theory has been developed that recovery coaching reduces relapse by providing ongoing support developing healthy problem-solving skills and self efficacy (reaching worthwhile goals), as well as connecting with the local recovery community for additional support.
Many peer recovery support specialists work with individuals who have left the prison system and are attempting to rebuild their lives.
[citation needed] It is critically important to understand that addiction is unlike any other malady, in that, it "...exists and thrives within the sufferer’s body on three completely separate but interconnected planes; the physiological, the mental/emotional, and the spiritual."
[14] For those requiring a higher level of care, such as medical detoxification for heroin or opiate withdrawal, or 24/7 sober companion and oversight services, there exist recovery coaching firms that specialize in providing what could often be described as an alternative to inpatient or outpatient treatment.