I never worked in the treatment field without working one-on-one with clients. From the very beginning, my work wasn’t about systems, policies, or theories—it was about sitting across from a real person and figuring out what they actually needed. I didn’t know it at the time, but that perspective would shape everything that came next.
In 2012, I was studying drug and alcohol counseling and doing therapeutic companion work for Intent Clinical. My job was hands-on—intensive 1:1 work, sourcing programs, and coordinating care. I had also lived in a traditional, “get a job and go to meetings” sober living myself. It worked for me, and I assumed that meant the system I’d inhabited also worked, more or less.
But then I started paying attention.
Survival Bias & the Missing Middle
I saw plenty of people struggle in traditional sober living. Some got kicked out for minor infractions. Others were lost in the shuffle, overlooked by undertrained staff. Many simply weren’t given the right kind of support. And yet, the field, myself included, often blamed them for not making it.
I realized I was looking at survival bias in real time. The people who made it through the system were the ones who fit into its structure—not necessarily the ones who needed help the most. And the ones creating and running these programs? By default, they were the ones for whom that particular system had worked. It made sense to them because they had succeeded within it. But that left out an entire group of people who didn’t fit neatly into those models.
The industry had rigid, institutional-style programs on one end and loose, minimally structured sober houses on the other. But what about the people in between? What about the ones who needed both real accountability and human-centered flexibility?
Building What Didn’t Exist
In 2013, I set out to fill that gap. No outside funding, no investors—just a commitment to doing things differently.
For me this wasn’t, and still isn’t, about competition. It’s about cooperation and rounding out a field full of amazing and dedicated professionals.
BTN isn’t about replacing existing models. It’s about offering something new—an approach where the right kind of attention mattered more than rigid rules, where people weren’t just surviving recovery but building real lives.
That’s the story I want to tell in this blog series—how BTN started, what we’ve learned, and why rethinking recovery isn’t just important, but necessary.
I had a vague sense of what I thought I could add to the treatment field. In 2013, I was looking to buy a house. I loved the Berkshires, and I had saved enough for a down payment. I wasn’t thinking about building a program—at least not in the way most people start one. I just knew that the right kind of attention could make all the difference, and I wanted to create a place where someone could actually receive it.
So I bought the house and took in one client. No structured program, no pre-set system—just a commitment to figuring out what he actually needed, in real time.
Building the Plane While Flying It
Because it was just him, there were no group facilitators or built-in structure to rely on. We built his weeks based on his needs, his preferences, and the resources available in the community. There was no manual for this—every part of the structure had to be organic. Some weeks were heavy on therapy and clinical work, others focused more on finding ways to engage with the world—whether through work, exercise, or community activities.
We had only two rules:
1. No drinking.
2. Be kind.
That was it. We’ve gone to great lengths to retain that simplicity, even as BTN has grown.
A Different Kind of Environment
I never wanted this to feel hierarchical. The client wasn’t beneath me, and I wasn’t running the house with some top-down authority. He was just part of the community—learning how to live in a way that worked for him.
That first year shaped everything that came next. It showed me that structure wasn’t something you imposed—it was something you built with the person, based on who they actually were. It also confirmed what I had sensed all along: recovery isn’t just about following a program. It’s about paying close attention and responding to what’s actually happening, not what’s supposed to happen.
BTN has evolved since those early days, but the foundation is still the same. We don’t run a one-size-fits-all program. We don’t create structure for the sake of structure. And we don’t lose sight of the individual sitting in front of us.
That’s how this all started. With one person, one house, and a commitment to doing things differently.
