Sober Sidekick Launches Sober Wellness to Support the Sober Curious Movement and Reduce Workplace Substance Use Stigma

Sober Sidekick is establishing a new standard in substance use disorder care.

New employer benefit for the roughly half of workers rethinking their drinking and drug use, helping them build awareness, cut back and develop healthier habits

BENTONVILLE, AR, UNITED STATES, October 29, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Sober Sidekick, the digital recovery support platform by Empathy Health Technologies, today launched Sober Wellness, an employer benefit aimed at the widest unaddressed gap in workplace behavioral health. Ninety-seven percent of employers now offer a mental health or talk therapy benefit. Fourteen percent of workers report access to anything specific to substance use. That is an 83-point spread, covering a condition that affected roughly 48 million Americans in the past year.

"This is an exciting new persona for us at Sober Sidekick to get to know and serve. There is a real stigma gap in how employers support people, not only those with a substance use disorder, but the far larger group trying to build a healthier relationship with alcohol and recreational drugs. Helping close that gap is something we are genuinely excited about." - Zach Zobel, President of Healthcare Solutions, Sober Sidekick

A growing sober curious movement
Forty-nine percent of Americans said they planned to drink less in 2025, up from 34% in 2023. Among younger workers the figure climbs sharply: 65% of Gen Z and 57% of millennials said they intended to cut back, and 30% of Americans took part in Dry January.

These are not groups that would put a label on their drinking or drug use, and most would never qualify for, seek out, or accept a treatment referral. They are also close to invisible to an employer's existing behavioral health vendor.

Sober Wellness is built around company challenges. An employer runs a reset, a Mindful 30, a Dry January or a Sober October challenge, and employees join under an anonymous handle, optionally on a team. Each person picks their own goal for the challenge, building awareness, cutting back or going alcohol-free, and can change it at any point.

The measurement is what distinguishes it. Before a challenge begins, employees complete a short starting reflection across five dimensions: sleep, energy, mood, stress and how in control of their drinking they feel. They reflect again as the challenge progresses, so the result is not a count of days but a visible shift. A completed challenge returns a recap showing check-in rate, sober days, best streak and movement on each of those five measures.

Day to day, employees get a check-in, a mindful minute and a short read. The learning library covers sleep, cravings, the money math of drinking, navigating happy hour and what actually happens in the brain during a break. A craving support tool offers a 60-second reset in the moment. Points and an anonymous leaderboard make it social, and employees can send a cheer on a teammate's check-in, so support runs in both directions.

Employees can also request a free 1:1 conversation with a certified Sober Sidekick recovery coach, available same day or next day, and open the Sober Sidekick community of more than a million people in recovery directly from the app.

Privacy and anonymity are central to the Sober Wellness experience. Employees can participate in a safe, judgment-free environment without revealing their identity or disclosing personal information to their employer. Individual reflections are never shared with employers, coaching requests go directly and exclusively to the Sober Sidekick coaching team, and employers receive only anonymous, aggregated insights into overall participation and progress. No diagnosis, disclosure or label is required to participate.

How we partner with industry-leading employers
Sober Sidekick's Sober Wellness solution is available to employers directly, with the ability to add coaching sessions and clinical telehealth integrations as needed. It integrates with existing EAP and mental health vendors with warm handoffs in both directions.

When an employee's needs become clinical, the same platform connects through the employer's health benefit to in-network behavioral health care, or to Sober Sidekick's own Recovery Care program, so an employer does not have to choose between serving the sober curious employee and the one in active recovery.

Employers and benefits consultants can learn more at sobersidekick.com.

About Sober Sidekick
Sober Sidekick, by Empathy Health Technologies, is a digital recovery support platform with more than 1.5 million downloads. The platform provides 24/7 peer-to-peer support, community engagement, and recovery tracking, and is designed to extend care beyond clinical settings and support longitudinal recovery. Users who form social connections show 93 to 244 percent increases in sustained engagement compared to baseline, including a validated 48 percent reduction in self-reported relapse for users who engage with peers at least once. Learn more at sobersidekick.com.

Sources
Business Group on Health 2025 Employer Health Care Strategy Survey; Pelago 2024 Annual Substance Use Management Survey; 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH); NCSolutions, a Circana Company, 2025 Sober Curious Nation Report; Drive Research and Morning Consult Dry January 2025 surveys.

Jeff Goe
Empathy Health Technologies Inc.
jeff@sobersidekick.com
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