Thursday, October 1, 2026
For those struggling with substance abuse and other addictions, help is always around the corner. While hotlines, support groups and personal counseling are available, two experts in the field are pioneering a new, modern method.
Frantz Michel of Baldwin and Spencer Cook of East Meadow are partners in the addiction treatment platform SoberIn40, a digital program that offers special, automatically tailored courses and challenges to help people in need get through tough times.
This month, they announced a new initiative to take the effort farther than ever before: anyone who can achieve 40 days of sobriety from alcohol or other substances can receive a $200 reward and a complimentary dinner for two at a restaurant partnered with SoberIn40. The challenge officially launched May 21 and will continue through May 21, 2027. Participants will use the SoberIn40 platform for accountability, daily check ins, and motivation throughout the experience.
The two men’s motivation in combatting addiction is deeply personal. Each of them faced spent time inside the federal prison system for drug-related offenses and spent years learning how to undo the damage through research, mentorship programs and teaching various classes. When the two men were released, they sought to take these ideas farther and help people stay out of trouble and avoid being behind bars altogether.
Cook, the founder of SoberIn40, was arrested in a multi-agency operation in 2014. Initially facing a 20-year prison sentence, Cook was commuted under the Second Chance Act for a reduced sentence. In 2020, after six and a half years of incarceration and a year under house arrest, he dedicated his new lease on life to becoming sober.
“I’m going to do everything in life that is completely opposite from what I’m used to and what feels normal,” he recalled thinking. “In order for me to do that successfully long term, I needed to understand my disease on a scientific level.”
Michel is the director of criminal justice partnerships at SoberIn40. He was serving two life sentences in federal prison before his sentence was commuted after about 15 years.
“I made some poor choices,” he said. “While I was incarcerated, I got to understand the effects of drugs on the community. I wasn't a drug user, I didn't drink, but I got to understand how my personal choices affected the community and selling narcotics. And from there, my journey began.”
The two men met thanks to their shared interests and mutual friends in the rehabilitation field.
“We're always talking about how our lives led us to this journey where we can make a difference,” Michel said. “That's why this app, SoberIn40, is so important; it’s because we know we can touch millions of lives.”
The SoberIn40 program is designed to “hijack the mind,” he said. He boiled his struggle with addiction down to two problems: cognitive dissonance and emotional bias.
Cook invested $700,000 of his own money after three years working in various sales roles into working with therapists and psychologists to develop the program after his incarceration.
“It’s a new industry — computational psychology,” he explained. “We ‘learn’ you in real time, and our algorithms figure out what you’re struggling with. Our course and content changes with what you’re struggling with in real time.”
N.G. Berrill, a forensic psychologist and founder of New York Forensic, was one of the first medical professionals who got involved with SoberIn40’s development. “It sounded like he had an interesting idea,” Berrill said of Cook, “something that was innovative, and would provide to individuals struggling with substance abuse a method of intervention that doesn’t really exist at the present time.”
Berrill described the program’s use of machine learning, combined with the work of clinicians, as a “very positive” development in the field of substance abuse treatment.
“Substance abuse is just so destructive,” he said. “It’s so terrible for people’s lives, their families … rather than turn away, I think the real (solution) is to turn toward this.”
The first phase of the SoberIn40 program lasts 40 days, takes about an hour a day and consists of videos, questions and more. It is followed by a 120-day, half-hour-a-day after-care program, and after that it opens up to 300 maintenance courses.
The program now has 2,200 incarcerated people participating in 16 state and federal facilities, and about 400 members on mobile devices using the program’s app.
“This is my calling,” Cook said. “You really do find purpose when your life is at its lowest.”
“If someone has a sickness, you go to the doctor, but with drugs, people are afraid to make that first step: to ask for help,” Michel said. “We're trying to bring something that that's right in the home where there's no stigmas attached. We're two people that been through it.”
SoberIn40 is an outpatient care program — not a replacement for urgent treatments or medical emergencies. A free version of the program is available, and the full program can be accessed for $39.99 a month. To learn more, visit SoberIn40.com.
