Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some answers to the most frequent questions I receive. For any other questions that have not been addressed below, please feel free to contact me through our contact page. I look forward to meeting you and speaking with you.

What does your service cost?

Let me start by saying that one of my personal aversions is websites that don’t state their rates. Nothing can get me off of a website faster. It always feels disingenuous to me, some kind of “ole bait and switch” going on that I don’t want any part of, and so I leave. With that said let me state plainly here that my initial consultations which usually runs anywhere between an hour and a half to two hours is $150.00. For that I usually ask that the person or people contacting me bring some paper and something to write with. I am going to go over quite a bit of information and it will probably be most helpful for you later if you write it down. That initial consultation is not a sales pitch, I promise you. Addiction is serious, it is life threatening, it follows a predictable path, and if left untreated, it is deadly. My goal during a consultation is to get some background information, to find out if my service would benefit this person, and if not to get them the help they need whenever I can.

My other fees vary greatly, honestly, there is too much variation to list. I charge different fees for public speaking depending on what the cause is and where in the country I have to travel; the same can be said for staging an intervention. If it’s a simple intervention and the family is mostly looking for guidance and insight, well, I can do that from my home. If it’s necessary to spend weeks working with family members first, and then arranging travel to and from an inpatient treatment center, not to mention arranging beds, finding the best possible fit for your family member, well obviously, something like that would cost more. Sober companionship where I may be away from my own family for many days at a time can cost even more.

So, you can see there’s a lot of variety in the services that I offer. They are very catered to the needs of the individual clients, which is what makes this such a great and unique service, but it’s also what makes it so difficult to list all of the possible prices for what I do.

Here’s the most important thing that you should know regarding my fees- I’ve tried to arrange my pricing so that the cost is not the primary barrier to someone getting help. I believe I’ve been successful at this.

Do you take insurance?

I'm sorry, I don't.

What’s the difference between a Recovery Coach and an Addiction Therapist?

I’ve been employed as both, and truthfully, I can tell you there is some overlap. As a Certified Recovery Coach, I find that I use a lot of the same skills and techniques that I used as a clinical therapist. But there are notable differences. A good example of this came recently when I was reviewing a client’s case with a clinical therapist at an outpatient treatment facility. During the review the therapist said to me on multiple occasions, “As you know Mr. Veeder, we have to get down to the root causes and conditions that led to this person’s use to begin with if they ever hope to work a recovery program.” I nodded along patiently, all the while thinking along to myself, “This is why I left clinical practice. I don’t find this claim to be all that true.” It’s great to really work through to the depth of what is behind people’s use, and honestly, it can be really really useful. But what I want most immediately is to help my client stay sober long enough that some of the dust can start to settle, some of the chaos can begin to unwind, and they can hopefully start to smile again. Sometimes what I want is just for my client to stay alive. We can work out the root causes and conditions later. There’ll be plenty of time for that. What I want is for my clients to stop using in a way that works for them, and for them to start to enjoy the rewards of their own recovery. If they do that long enough then I promise, the underlying causes and conditions will surface when the time is right, and they can get to work on that stuff. It is important. Sometimes it needs to happen simultaneously. Many of my clients will work with me daily while also seeing a mental health therapist or clinical social worker or an addiction therapist. That can be really useful. My work as a coach involves a lot of Motivational Interviewing (a therapeutic technique for helping clients to resolve their own ambivalence) but it also focuses a lot on just getting out of their heads and into their bodies, on building the lives that they WANT to wake up to every day.

I am also a long-distance runner and at times will hire my own coach for training. It’s possible to find running coaches that don’t run. They may be great coaches, I have no idea. The coach that I hire has experience as a long-distance runner. Because of this I trust what she tells me. She’s certified, which means she has met an educational standard. That’s important to me. But she’s also experienced, and sometimes, on mile 18, that can mean EVERYTHING. As a coach I am pulling on all of these resources, my education, my past experiences as a clinical therapist, and maybe most importantly, my extensive experience as a person in long-term recovery.

I’ve heard about apps that offer something similar to what it sounds like you’re describing. How are you different?

I’ve actually never tried any of these apps so I can’t speak from experience. From what I have been able to gather with these apps you are assigned to a therapist and who you meet with weekly, and then if you have some kind of crisis you can shoot them an email and they’ll schedule to meet with you at some point that day. They sound good and very affordable. However, this isn’t what I do. For one thing I only have a very limited number of clients at a time, which means that all of my clients get pretty immediate attention. We do schedule a regular weekly session, sometimes we schedule two sessions per week, one longer session and a pretty deep-dive “check-in” later in the week, however, I typically will call or communicate via text or email with most of my clients every single day. That means holidays…weekends…nights…and sometimes in the middle of the night…if my clients need time to talk, to process, to laugh, cry, or scream, I try to be available. There are times that I am less accessible. Even I like to go to a movie every once in a while; and sometimes I am busy with other clients who are also in crisis. But for the most part I try to be there if I can. The exceptions to this would just be non-emergencies. I’ve had clients ask me what they should have for dinner before- usually I’ll let them work that out for themselves.

This sounds a lot like a 12-step sponsor. How is it different?