Every training organisation has a founding story, but Sober Academy’s begins in a place most institutions would rather not mention: thirteen years of addiction, on the streets and in the wards of London.
Ian Young was born in London and came of age in the city’s punk era. What followed was more than a decade of IV cocaine and heroin use, alcoholism and periods of homelessness — an addiction that took everything it was possible to take. In March 2001, aged 29, he got sober. He has remained so ever since.
From client to professional
Recovery did not just give Ian his life back; it gave him a direction. By 2003, two years into sobriety, he was working in addiction treatment — learning the sector from the ground up, from the vantage point of someone who understood the illness not as theory but as memory.
In 2008 he founded Sober Services, and in doing so became one of the first professional interventionists operating outside North America. At the time, intervention as a structured professional practice was almost unknown in Europe. Families facing addiction had treatment centres to turn to, but almost nobody whose job was to bridge the gap between a family in crisis and a person refusing help. Sober Services built that bridge — interventions, sober companions, sober transport, rehab rescue — and in doing so helped define what professional recovery support could look like on this side of the Atlantic.
Why the Academy?
Working at the sharp end of the sector for years, Ian kept running into the same problem: there were not enough properly trained people. Interventionists, companions and coaches were learning by improvisation, with no structured pathway, no external standards and no recognised qualifications. The work was too serious for that.
In 2015 he founded Sober Academy to professionalise the training side of the sector. The Academy’s courses were built from front-line practice — including The Seven Stages of The Sober Intervention, Ian’s own intervention framework — and from the outset the aim was external validation rather than self-certification. The Academy’s Sober Intervention course achieved Level 4 accreditation and its Recovery Coaching course Level 5 through OCN Credit4Learning, the first external accreditation of its kind in the UK sector. Training has since been delivered in England, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Russia, Israel and Thailand.
A wider contribution
Ian’s commitment to standards has never stopped at his own organisation’s door. In 2017 he co-founded the European Association of Recovery Specialists (EARS) with six other practitioners, creating a professional body for a sector that had none. He is also the author of It’s Not About Me! — Confessions of a Recovered Outlaw Addict, a memoir of addiction and recovery that he gives away as a free ebook, because the message was never meant to be behind a paywall, and never will be.
In October 2020 he moved to Koh Phangan, Thailand, and today he serves as Managing Director of Holina Global — a group that includes Holina Rehab Koh Phangan, Holina Village Cyprus, Holina Healing Centre Khao Yai, Holina Clinic and Holina Resort, with Holina Executive opening near Larnaca in September 2026. The thread connecting all of it is unchanged: twenty-five years of personal recovery, put to professional use.
What the story means for students
For the people who train with us, the point of this history is not biography — it is credibility. Every framework we teach was built in real interventions, real companion assignments and real family crises, by someone who has sat in both chairs: the person who needed help, and the professional learning to give it. That dual perspective shapes the culture of the Academy. We teach recovery work as a serious profession, and we never forget who it is ultimately for — the still-suffering person and the family who loves them.
The Academy today
Like much of the sector, the Academy was interrupted by COVID. Our accreditation lapsed when we refused to move the training online — intervention work, in our view, is taught face to face or not taught properly. Now the Academy is relaunching, with re-accreditation in progress and the same convictions intact: external standards, practical training, and tutors who have actually done the work.
The relaunch begins with a complimentary two-day Sober Intervention training on 30–31 October 2026, hosted at Holina Executive in Cyprus — fittingly, the newest part of the group Ian now leads.
Thirteen years of addiction. Twenty-five years of recovery. More than two decades of building the professional structures he once needed and could not find. That is the story this Academy is built on — and the standard it intends to keep, course by course and graduate by graduate, for as long as the Academy exists.
Train with us. Register your interest in the complimentary Cyprus training at holinaexecutive.com/sober-intervention-training/.
