Who Can Benefit From a Professional Sober Escort?
Are you or a loved one finding it challenging to manage cravings after reaching early sobriety? Do you need to build more accountability into your daily routines for the purpose of sustained recovery? Many people find hiring a professional sober escort a helpful way to maintain sobriety in the real world. Although this line of service has been around for a long time, not many people are familiar with its various benefits.
What Does a Sober Escort Do?
A sober escort is a person who provides peer support by being available 24/7 as you navigate your life in early sobriety. They can accompany you when you go about daily routines, social events, and even business meetings that might have drugs and alcohol present. Their job is to help screen the environmental triggers and stop you from actually using the substances. Some other ways a sober escort can be helpful include:
- Encouraging you to plan healthy diets and maintain regular sleep habits
- Motivating you to participate in the activities of your recovery community
- Coaching you to develop healthy practices that help prevent relapse
- Connecting you with resources that meet your unique and changing needs
Although sober escorts are not doctors or therapists, they play a significant role in the medical recovery community by connecting clients with the best intervention plans. Most of them have walked the walk of recovery from addiction themselves, usually with a length of decade-long sobriety. This means they know the ups and downs of early sobriety, and they have also succeeded in long-term sobriety. Furthermore, they are trained professionals who have a high level of knowledge about recovery.
When Do You Need to Work With a Sober Escort?
If you or your loved one has just completed a detox treatment or experienced a relapse after sobriety, this must be a difficult and stressful time to adjust and transition to living outside of a closely monitored and structured treatment environment. If you or your loved one worry that being left alone might trigger a relapse, and not even all the events in the recovery community can help alleviate that sense of isolation or powerlessness, maybe it is time to consider working with a sober escort.
These times are fragile moments for recovering individuals to be alone. Some may be triggered by boredom and isolation. Others might find the mental health implications stronger. There have been examples of young recovering individuals dying by suicide after completing detox treatment. This vulnerable timeframe after exiting from detox treatment centers cannot be under-estimated.
If you have exhausted help from the traditional field of therapists, counselors, and support groups but would like to have an added layer of support, you can also consider working with professional sober escorts. Their continued supervision can help you stay on track with recovery. Sober escorts can be especially helpful for adolescents and teens who have just completed detox treatment. Usually, their parents are busy and cannot constantly monitor their progress. They also likely do not have the know-how to detect triggers in a young person’s life. Sober escorts can serve as a family’s additional support system.
What Triggers Can a Sober Escort Help You Reduce?
We often think of triggers as the presence of drugs and alcohol. However, they are more than just that. Strictly speaking, a trigger can be a place, an event, a person, a situation, or even a memory that enables the resurfacing of urges to use drugs and alcohol. Triggers also vary in severity from intrusive thoughts to an overwhelming need to act. Researchers find that emotional triggers often precede physical triggering.
There are also internal triggers and external triggers. The first type emerges within a recovering individual who feels a void or an emotion of hopelessness. These emotions and feelings, if not addressed timely and in a healthy way, might ripen into actual relapses. This is also why many people say emotional triggers always precede most actual relapses. If a recovering individual feels overwhelmed by sadness, stress, anger, fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, they may feel a need to use drugs and alcohol for an escape from processing these emotions. Negative thoughts and traumatic memories also work in similar fashions.
External triggers are physical and visible triggers including people, social events, the presence of substances, and peer pressure. These are areas where sober escorts can help a recovering person by adding a layer of accountability (or protection). Through open and trusted conversations, sober escorts can also serve as observant companions who notice the emotional stress a recovering person is going through. These all help clients have a higher chance of sustained recovery.
Do you or your loved one need additional support after completing detox treatment? Have you heard of sober escort services? Are you looking for a kind of intervention that helps recovering teens and young adults overcome isolation, depression, and potential relapse? Working with professional sober escorts may be a beneficial option for you. They can provide tailor-made services to accompany you or your loved one through this vulnerable phase of early sobriety. At South Florida Intervention, our professionally-trained interventionists, including sober escorts, have helped many teens and young adults in maintaining sobriety. We know how to work with young people and their families, no matter which stage of recovery you are at. Apart from sober escorts, recovery coaching, and parent coaching, we also offer detailed case management. If your loved one is in a fragile state after detox treatment, make sure there is enough support available. Sober escort services can help your family. Call us at (202) 390-2273.