Who This Is ForCommon Starting Points
- Newly in recovery and building structure for the first time
- Completed treatment and want ongoing accountability and relapse-prevention planning
- Weighing whether treatment is the right next step
- Supporting a family member or partner through their recovery and need a strategic outside perspective
How Coaching HelpsWhat the Work Looks Like
- Relapse-prevention planning — informed by CENAPS Relapse Prevention training under Terrence Gorski, MA, identifying personal warning signs and building a concrete plan before a crisis, not during one.
- Structure and accountability — regular check-ins and concrete commitments, not just conversation.
- Identity-shift work — recovery changes who someone is day to day, not just what they do; coaching addresses that shift directly, using the encouragement-over-praise and logical-consequences approach described on the Method page.
- Goal-setting — translating "staying sober" into specific, trackable actions.
BackgroundWhy This Focus
Dr. Kassel spent sixteen years directing forensic and community mental-health programs in Illinois, including substance-treatment-adjacent work, and later authored and taught graduate-level coursework in Substance Abuse Counseling and Addictive Disorders. That combination of hands-on program leadership and formal clinical education underlies the recovery coaching offered here.
Coaching does not replace medical detox, medication-assisted treatment (MAT), or licensed clinical addiction treatment. It's designed to complement those services, or to support someone who has already completed them.