Sober Solutions

Honorable Mention Award at the 12th Annual DifferenceMaker $50,000 Idea Challenge

Team Sober Solutions is made up of two freshmen, studying Business Administration, Zachary Richard and Jonik Carozza. They are working on an Short Message Service (SMS) Lifeline and smartphone application to prevent relapses in substance abuse. Users can contact this lifeline to receive assistance when they turn to substance use. Once a text is sent to this lifeline, their program will give the user an activity to do and notify someone to check on this person to ensure they do not stray away from said activity. The user will also be presented with educational tips as well as a community feature where users can connect anonymously and share their experiences to learn from each other. This team won the Honorable Mention Award of $2,000 at the 2024 DifferenceMaker $50,000 Idea Challenge.

During their pitch, Team Sober Solutions explained how their service works and allows for individualization. The SMS Lifeline allows for users to customize the activities to help fight substance abuse and sets goals for users. For example, a goal could be attending AA meetings or celebrating the amount of time the user has maintained sobriety. The platform is designed to be a motivational tool to keep users from relapsing ranging from substance addictions to gambling addictions.

The two teammates are passionate about this idea because it is important to them to save people’s lives and help them fight addiction. With the funding they received from the Idea Challenge, they plan to put even more research into how these addictions affect people and how to treat them properly with professional knowledge. They also aim to hire workers to help with the initial development of the app in addition to using funding for marketing costs.