About Our Recovery Coaching Program
The Connection® program is an excellent resource for individuals and families in early recovery. Recovery coaches provide customized and confidential support, guiding participants toward long-term recovery.
Connection® Recovery Coaching and Monitoring
Convenient and confidential, Hazelden Betty Ford's Connection program helps you navigate early recovery with personalized recovery coaching.
You can also receive monitoring and accountability reports, as well as random drug testing as part of the Connection program. These Connection services are great accountability measures that are especially helpful for people who:
- Have been through treatment multiple times
- Are facing the loss of a professional license
- Are struggling with legal issues or custody matters
- Are planning to return to college
- Need additional accountability
Recovery Coaches Make the Difference
Early recovery is a critical inflection point. You have to reshape your thinking and behavior as well as your relationship with mind-altering substances, but cravings are at an all-time high. Your Connection recovery coach can help you navigate these cravings and manage any intrusive thoughts or feelings, each day building toward long-term sobriety.
Research also verifies how important it is to continue with recovery-focused activities following treatment for alcohol or other drugs. In fact, scientific findings published by Hazelden Betty Ford's Butler Center for Research show that the average abstinence rate increases to 82 percent for individuals who participate in recovery monitoring programs.
Through Connection services, you can also share your recovery progress with family members and authority figures—employers, licensing boards, school administrators or parole officers.
How Do Connection Recovery Coaches Help?
The Connection program includes the most promising addiction recovery support practices, including:
- Intensive, personalized sober coaching and case management
- Frequent phone calls with a recovery coach for you and designated family members
- Documented recovery compliance updates
- Random drug testing and monitoring services for accountability
These activities help to strengthen your sobriety while also promoting peace of mind for your loved ones.
Three Phases of Connection Coaching
Your Connection recovery coaches will guide you through three distinct phases. These are based in emerging research on addiction recovery:
- Initial training in practical recovery tasks—developing your sober support network and resources, managing your time, following through with commitments
- Ongoing identification of roadblocks related to your social, emotional, spiritual, financial and vocational wellbeing
- Personal goal-setting and creating an action plan for reaching those goals
Connection sober coaches have extensive training in recovery management, relapse prevention and phone support.
Recovery Coaching Q&A
How do Connection services bridge the gap between addiction treatment and recovery?
In addiction treatment, patients are educated about how recovery works, but learning how to live in recovery—actually changing your mindset and behaviors in relation to almost every aspect of your life—presents new challenges at every turn. Having support, guidance and accountability in those early months makes that transition smoother.
Our professional recovery coaches work with you over an extended period of time to help you establish and sustain sobriety so you can be the person you want to be and lead the life you want to live.
What behaviors or objectives do Connection Coaches focus on?
First and foremost, coaches help you stay sober. The Connection program's random drug testing keep you abstinent and accountable, and sober coaches will help you identify the triggers, feelings and attitudes that could lead to relapse. Coaches also help you form a plan to address any triggering emotions or situations.
Relapse begins long before someone picks up a substance. Relapse can start with getting complacent about recovery, experiencing some kind of loss, deciding not to go to meetings or neglecting your coping skills. When that’s the case, a you might become less and less resistant to cravings and intrusive thoughts.
Do recovery coaches really get to know their patients?
Yes, and patients grow to trust and count on Connection recovery coaches. Even patients who initially resisted against coaching become engaged and encouraged.
One of Connection's first patients was a professional athlete who didn't want anything to do with the program or services. His team insisted that he participate. As the Connection coach and patient got to know one another, they shared some good cries and laughs—and the patient thrived in recovery. His wife was thrilled. He was thrilled. And his team was extremely thankful and impressed.
Can family members get involved with Connection?
There are two ways for family members to get involved: A Connection participant can designate someone to receive accountability updates and verification reports. Our professional recovery coaches help spouses, parents and other family members build a recovery of their own.
What's the best advice for individuals and families who are new to recovery?
Be patient. There are ups and downs in early recovery, and change takes time. Try to stay positive and stick together through the journey. Things will eventually stabilize, and a new normal will be established. Just make sure to seek your own support throughout the process. If you need help, we’re here for you.
