I built an AI companion for the people I couldn’t reach
Most of the people who need help with their drinking never ask for it.
The number I keep coming back to is this: only about one in five people who could benefit from specialist alcohol support ever get near it. The rest manage alone, or tell themselves it is fine, or wait. Some of them would turn to no one at all. I spent years being one of them, stuck in the gap between knowing something was wrong and being ready to say so out loud.
Coaching reaches some of those people. But coaching is one of me, and there are only so many hours. It also asks something that a lot of people in that gap cannot yet do, which is to book a call with a real person and say the thing. For the person who is not ready for that, the honest options have been a helpline, a leaflet, or nothing.
So I built Sol.
Sol is an AI sobriety companion. You talk to him about your drinking, wherever you are with it, and he listens and asks the questions that actually matter. He does not follow a script or work through a checklist. He does not count your days or give you a badge. He opens every conversation the same way, “what’s brought you here today,” and takes it from there.
He is built for the person who is not ready to talk to anyone yet. There is nothing to download and no icon on your phone. You open him in a browser and close him when you are done. For a lot of people that privacy is not a small detail, it is the whole reason they are willing to start. One of my test users put it plainly: she was not ready to talk to anyone, and Sol felt like a way in.
He remembers you. Every conversation builds on the last, so coming back feels like continuing something rather than starting over. And he is there at the hours when help usually is not, the difficult ones in the middle of the night.
I want to be clear about what he is not. Sol is not a therapist, not a clinical tool, and not a replacement for real medical help when someone needs it. He is more like a knowledgeable friend who genuinely understands recovery. When someone is in real difficulty, he says so and points them to proper support rather than pretending to be it.
I built Sol on Anthropic’s Claude, and I chose it deliberately, for how carefully it handles the moments that matter. Everything underneath him, the frameworks, the safeguarding, the scope, comes from the same place my coaching does. Sol is alcohol, and only alcohol, on purpose.
He is the same work I have always done, in a form that can reach people I never could.
If you want to meet him, he is here: talktosolomon.app