“Archangels gave me my life back. Their team is the most amazing, caring people I have ever met. The housing they sent me to was amazing, the groups are amazing, and this whole project is amazing. If you're tired of being sick and tired, reach out and save your life.”
“This facility is run by some of the best people you could ever ask for. They are extremely professional and truly dedicated to helping those struggling with mental health and addiction. They truly saved my life. I will be forever grateful for everything they did for me.”
“I had the honor of touring this facility, and it was absolutely beautiful, clean, and thoughtfully designed. But more than how it looked, you could feel the love in every detail. Watching the staff interact with clients genuinely touched my heart.”
Plain, fact-first answers about how care works here. Want to talk to a person? Call (888) 464-2144.
A 60-second walkthrough of the Tinton Falls clinic, the space where the program actually runs.
Motivational interviewing (MI) is not a technique applied to a passive client; it is a clinical conversational style that takes the client's ambivalence about change seriously, works with it rather than against it, and supports the client's own reasons for changing rather than supplying reasons from the outside. Developed by William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick in the early 1980s, MI has become one of the most studied and most widely adopted approaches in addiction medicine, and is woven across the clinical conversations at The Archangel Centers regardless of the formal therapy modality in use.
Most people who arrive at treatment for substance use disorder are ambivalent. They want to change and they do not. They know the use is harming them and they are not sure they can imagine life without it. They feel pulled toward treatment and pulled toward leaving the call. This is not a moral failure or a sign of weak commitment. It is what change looks like when it is real.
Traditional confrontational approaches to addiction treatment ("you have to admit you have a problem, you have to surrender, you have to..." ) often produced reactance: the more the clinician pushed, the more the client argued against change. The clinician became, in the language Miller and Rollnick use, "the voice of change," and the client became "the voice for the status quo," which solidified the very position the clinician was trying to dissolve.
MI flips the dynamic. The clinician does not supply the arguments for change. The clinician supports the client's own emerging arguments for change, which are almost always present in the ambivalence.
MI is organized around four overlapping processes:
Building the relationship. Without engagement, nothing else matters.
Narrowing the conversation to specific behaviors or changes the client is considering.
Drawing out the client's own motivations for change. This is the distinctive heart of MI.
Building a concrete plan once the client has resolved enough of the ambivalence to commit to action.
The processes are not linear stages. A skilled MI clinician moves among them as the conversation requires.
Group rooms, private therapy offices, the medical office, family programming rooms, and the wellness space, designed for clinical depth and nervous-system regulation.
The clinical techniques of MI are sometimes summarized as OARS:
These are not gimmicks. They are the operational form of a stance that takes the client's words seriously as data about their internal state.
The mechanism most associated with MI's effectiveness is the elicitation of "change talk": the client's own statements that move toward change. The categories (sometimes summarized as DARN-C):
The MI clinician notices change talk, reinforces it through reflective listening, and asks for more. Over time, the client's own change talk builds the case for change.
MI is most powerful in specific clinical situations:
MI is not the whole treatment for SUD. It is the conversational engine that supports the other modalities.
Treatment integrates cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), motivational interviewing, narrative therapy, and trauma-informed care with EMDR available in individual therapy. The medical provider manages MAT (Suboxone, Vivitrol, Sublocade) and psychiatric medications when indicated.
Intake uses the full evidence-based battery: ASAM Criteria, LOCUS for mental health acuity, PHQ-9, GAD-7, the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, plus biopsychosocial, nutrition, and pain screens. The assessment drives the treatment plan from day one.
See Our ModalitiesMI integrates with:
MI is the conversational stance the clinical team takes by default. Specifically:
A few clarifications:
“I came back from rock bottom. I'm here because I want to show others they can too. This isn't just a business. It's my mission.”- Mike Sorrentino, Founder
Mike and Lauren Sorrentino did not set out to build a generic treatment center. They wanted a recovery-grounded program that mixes lived experience, licensed clinical expertise, and family programming that actually moves the needle for the people who love someone in active addiction.
The clinic that resulted is small enough that each client knows their primary therapist by name, but resourced enough to deliver the full ASAM continuum from Partial Care through outpatient continuing care, with MAT and EMDR available when clinically indicated.
Read the Full StoryMost clients leave the first admissions call with a clinical assessment, an insurance verification, and a scheduled start date. Recovery starts with a decision, not a commitment. The admissions line is staffed around the clock.
Confidential, 24/7 admissions. Same-week placement is often available. Verify your insurance free of charge before any commitment.
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