How to Choose the Right Sober Companion: 8 Questions to Ask Before You Hire

Finding a sober companion is not the same as finding a contractor or personal trainer. The person you bring into this role will have access to someone's daily life, emotional state, and the most vulnerable stretch of their recovery. The decision deserves more than a Google search and a phone call. It deserves a deliberate vetting process, because not all sober companion services are structured the same way, and those differences can have real clinical consequences.

Here are eight questions that separate a professional PRA from someone simply willing to help.

1. What credentials do you hold?

A qualified sober companion holds verifiable certifications, not just personal recovery experience. Look for credentials like CCAPP, CCAR, or IRI. These indicate formal training in recovery support, ethics, and scope of practice. Hired Power's Personal Recovery Assistants hold these credentials across a team that also includes nurses, therapists, counselors, and professionals from executive careers. Ask for specifics. Vague answers are informative in their own right.

2. Is clinical supervision part of your model?

A peer-reviewed evaluation of peer recovery services published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports found that efforts to strengthen therapeutic alliances through training, mentoring, and continued education are among the most important factors in improving peer support effectiveness. A PRA operating without clinical supervision is operating without a feedback loop. At Hired Power, every PRA works under active clinical oversight, which means the support being delivered is accountable to a qualified clinician, not just to goodwill.

3. How do you match companions to clients?

The relationship between a client and their PRA is extremely important to outcomes. Research published in Journal of Traumatic Stress found that therapeutic alliance, defined as a sense of trust, safety, and shared goals, is a consistent predictor of improvements in substance use and co-occurring mental health symptoms. A provider that assigns companions by availability rather than compatibility is ignoring one of the most predictive variables in recovery support. Hired Power's matching process is intentional, drawing from a team diverse in background, age, professional experience, and personal history.

4. What ethical framework governs your conduct?

A credible PRA service has a published or articulable code of ethics that defines scope of practice, confidentiality boundaries, and what happens when something goes wrong. Hired Power was the first organization in the field to establish professional standards and ethics for companion services. That institutional foundation should be the baseline you expect from anyone you're considering.

5. Can you accommodate the reality of my situation?

A person returning home from residential treatment has different needs than an executive traveling for work or a parent managing co-occurring mental health challenges. The right provider offers flexibility in format, live-in, daily, hourly, or virtual, and has team members across the country. If a service has one format and one geography, you may be fitting your situation to their capacity rather than the other way around.

6. How do you communicate with the rest of the treatment team?

A PRA working in isolation from a client's therapist, psychiatrist, or case manager is a missed opportunity at best and a clinical risk at worst. Ask specifically how the companion interfaces with other providers. At Hired Power, PRAs work in coordination with CarePathways Clinical Case Management and the broader clinical team, ensuring that what happens in daily life informs the clinical plan and vice versa.

7. Have you worked with clients managing co-occurring conditions?

A qualitative analysis published in BMC Psychiatry found that trust, rapport, and the ability to navigate complex social and clinical barriers are the primary facilitators of effective peer recovery specialist connections, particularly for clients with layered presentations. If your situation involves anxiety, trauma, ADHD, or any co-occurring condition alongside substance use, the companion's experience with that complexity is not optional information.

8. What does the process of getting started look like?

A professional service has a clear, responsive intake process. Hired Power offers free consultations and is available around the clock. If a provider is hard to reach before you've hired them, that tells you something about how available they will be after.

The decision to hire a sober companion is a meaningful one. The questions above are not meant to make it harder. They are meant to make the answer clearer. To speak with a Hired Power professional, visit the contact page. For additional context on how the PRA role works in practice, the definitive guide to Personal Recovery Assistants is a useful starting point.