Stage 1: The Vision
In 2012, I was studying for a LADC and working for a behavioral health consulting firm in Boston. My work focused on intensive one-on-one support and sourcing different programs for clients. I was five years in recovery at the time and still figuring out what types of support worked best for me. I loved providing such high-touch care, diving deep with people and helping them find the right path.
Prior to that period, I had been through sober living myself. It worked for me, but as I looked around, I couldn’t ignore the fact that many people weren’t as lucky. They struggled. And for many of them, sober living didn’t work at all. It was clear to me that these environments weren’t built to serve everyone equally. The more I saw, the more I realized how much was being missed.
As part of my work, I visited other programs and that’s when the chasm became even clearer. The kind of care I believed in—individualized and hands-on, wasn’t what people were getting. Many of the visited programs seemed focused on pushing people to conform and trying to fit everyone into the same mold, without taking into account their individual needs and stories.
I began to wonder: What if we could create a different kind of environment? One in which recovery wasn’t about forcing people to fit into a rigid mold, but about meeting them where they were and supporting their unique journey. What if the answer wasn’t conformity, but individuality? Could we replicate the individualized care I had fallen in love with providing, but provide it in a communal setting? At this point in my life I felt more supported and connected to my community than ever before. I had made life-long friends. I knew that at least part of this connection could be attributed to walking the same path as my contemporaries. Could we create a place in which that same camaraderie could exist, without everyone going to the same meetings or the same outpatient groups? Could everyone walk their own parallel path and still feel supported and even loved by their community, as I had?
These questions became the spark for BTN.
Stage 2: The Beginning
In 2013, I bought a house in the Berkshires, and that’s where BTN truly began. It wasn’t much—just a simple space where we could start building something different. A few friends moved in and we began to to create a sober community founded on a few key principles; kindness, wellness, inclusivity and inspiration. We ultimately wanted to test the idea: could we create a sober living environment without rigid rules, one that focused on the individuality rather than a system? We wanted to see if people could thrive when given the space to be themselves, with support that was tailored to them.
But this idea wasn’t born in isolation. My life at the time was filled with adventure and learning. In 2009, I had met Gabe Torres, who would later become a co-founder of BTN, in an English class at Berkshire Community College. Gabe and I took our love for recovery-fueled experiences to a new level. We traveled through Southeast Asia, rock climbing, surfing, and engaging with different types of recovery and spirituality. Gabe went on to study outdoor education at UNH, while I attended NOLS at the University of Utah. Those experiences taught us about different cultures and perspectives, how group dynamics function under pressure and the transformative power of respecting and being in the wilderness.
Also during that time, my friends and I were having our own collective and individual breakthroughs. We were inspired by the possibilities when a wide range of recovery principles were shared, applied, and practiced in real life. We spent countless hours reflecting on the best conditions, ideas, and actions that had helped us, and could help others. This spirit of exploration and discovery directly influenced how we wanted to approach recovery at BTN.
Later in 2013, an inpatient facility opened in the Berkshires, and in many ways, were practicing the residential model of care I had envisioned. When one of their patients wanted to live with us after treatment, I worked closely with their team, and we tailored an individualized case management plan that fit within our larger community. It was a test of the concept, and it worked.
By 2014, it was time to expand. I had become friends with Collin Woods, a former inpatient treatment employee turned pharmacy student, who shared the same beliefs in individualized support and recovery-method agnosticism. That fall, with a mix of excitement and reckless abandon, we rented another house and took in three clients. It was a crash course in running a human services business, but we both leaned on our case management experiences to work closely with the individual clinical teams of each client. We learned a lot of lessons, but the most important was our commitment to clarity in communication, consistency in accountability, and, above all, maintaining compassion in everything we did. This was another step in the direction of concretizing the theory of fully individual attention amidst a larger community.
Stage 3: Committing To The Dream
It was in 2016 that BTN really took off. BTN’s official birthday is still debated between the day we incorporated, the day we closed on the second house or the day we adopted our first dog, Kaya. We took on our fourth co-founder, Ryan Sears, who had experience in different aspects of residential treatment and had a zest for organizational infrastructure. We also bought our second house, a 7 bedroom home adjacent to the first house I had bought in 2013. With a team, a philosophy, and our environment in place, it was time to go all in. We held to our belief that recovery shouldn’t be dictated by external rules but should instead be guided by a clients unique needs and preferences, allowing them to discover their own path in the safety of our care.
It started to happen. Clients responded better than we could have dreamed to a level of respect we knew they deserved. We lived in the balance of accountability and autonomy. We were still responsible to do our best to keep people safe, and we fully understood risks, but we felt equally responsible to allow people to be the driving force in their trajectory and thus their life. We weren’t going to dictate their next step. Instead, we created an environment where they had space to reflect, to make mistakes, and then, with our guidance, to get back up and move forward.
This shift in responsibility wasn’t just a small moment. It was a turning point. It showed us that the idea of personalized recovery—meeting people where they were, instead of fitting them into a rigid mold—wasn’t just a theory. Some people needed autonomy in their recovery process, and when they had it, real transformation could happen. Our role wasn’t to pull the strings but to walk beside them as they figured out how to pull their own.
In 2018, we started to expand our team with two important hires: Andy Baldwin and Chris Kelley. Chris, a childhood hometown friend of mine, had been the program director at a treatment center for years. Andrew, on the other hand, was our first hire without any formal treatment experience. Together, they brought the perfect blend of energy at the perfect time. Chris’s extensive management background and Andrew’s open-minded, compassionate approach were exactly what BTN needed to continue to evolve. The challenge from that point forward was to grow without losing sight of our mission: focusing on one client at a time, giving them the space and support to take responsibility for their recovery, while holding fast to our core values.
Stage 4: Testing and Expanding the Model
As BTN continued to grow, we faced a pivotal challenge: how could we scale what we were doing without losing the personal, individualized care that had defined us from the beginning? Every new client and staff member was a test of the model we had worked so hard to build. The key was to ensure that as we expanded, we never lost sight of the reason we started. In 2020 we bought our third home, adjacent to the second, bringing our capacity to thirteen.
A major turning point came when we decided to expand BTN’s clinical reach. By 2021, we had built a clinical company to offer more robust therapeutic support, merging it with BTN to create a seamless blend of individualized coaching support and professional clinical care. This was our opportunity to go deeper, to bring together the practical and the therapeutic in a way that allowed clients to get the best of both worlds. Around that time we also partnered with a medical anthropologist to better understand the sociological and cultural dynamics of the work we were doing. This partnership allowed us to reflect more deeply on how the broader context of recovery—cultural expectations, social dynamics, and individual identities—impacted our clients. The insights gained from this work helped us refine our process even further, ensuring that we were not only providing individualized care but doing so in a way that respected the complex realities each person faced.
Throughout this growth, two things became clear: safety and accountability were at the heart of what we were doing. Recovery was not just about offering space for people to find themselves—it was about creating a physically and emotionally safe environment where they could do so with the right kind of support. Clients needed the freedom to make decisions, but they also needed accountability to ensure that those decisions aligned with their long-term goals. Our growth wasn’t just about adding more services—it was about deepening the balance between autonomy and accountability in a way that made our clients feel secure while taking control of their own recovery.
Through this growth, our foundation remained the same: individualized support, client autonomy, safety, and accountability. Expanding wasn’t about getting bigger—it was about getting better.
Stage 5: The Resolution – Growing with Purpose
As BTN continued to evolve, one thing remained constant: our commitment to individualized care. We didn’t grow for the sake of growth. Our growth rate is one client and 2 employees per year, or in other words, very slow. Each step forward was intentional, designed to better serve our clients while staying true to our core principles—autonomy, safety, accountability, and compassionate support.
Today, BTN is not just a recovery program. It’s a community, an experience, a space where people come to rebuild their lives on their terms, but with the right support in place. From the beginning, we’ve believed that recovery isn’t something that can be forced or rushed. People need time, space, and guidance to rediscover themselves, and our role is to walk beside them, offering them the tools and support they need to take ownership of their journey.
Our team has grown, our services have expanded, and our internal systems are stronger. We’ve gotten better at integrating clinical care with personalized coaching, built relationships with specialists, and created a holistic ecosystem that meets people where they are. But the heart of BTN remains the same: we focus on one client at a time. Each person who comes through our doors is seen, heard, and given the opportunity to shape their own recovery path.
What began as an idea and a small house in the Berkshires has grown into a multifaceted, robust ecosystem of wellness that we are immensely proud of, but not even close to finished with. The next iterations are coming, as we continue our quest to build the best possible version of BTN. Reflecting back, I stand in awe of the creative, compassionate team that we have built, the courage of the clients we have had the honor to work with, the trust and love demonstrated by their families. I came to the Berkshires 15 years ago with almost nothing to my name and experienced the magical, healing power of this place. I am humbled and honored to enter another small contribution to that healing culture.
With love and gratitude,
Dylan
