About
Your Founder
I built Solomon because I needed it - and nothing like it existed.
My name is David Henzell. I'm a sobriety coach, a former frontline addiction worker, and someone with eight years of personal sobriety. I founded Phenomenal Sobriety and I am the creator of Sol - the AI companion at the heart of the Solomon platform.
I didn't come to this from a boardroom or a research paper. I came to it from the inside.
Why This Exists
For years, I was one of the people Solomon is built for. Worried about my drinking. Aware, on some level, that something had to change. But nowhere near ready to pick up a phone, sit in a circle, or tell a GP what was really going on.
Not because help didn't exist. But because nothing about the help that existed felt like it was meant for me.
That gap - between knowing something is wrong and being ready to do something about it - is where most people stay stuck. Research suggests that only 22% of people who need specialist alcohol support in England are actually accessing it. The other 78% aren't failing to recover. They're failing to begin.
Solomon exists for them. For the version of me that needed something private, non-clinical, and available at 11pm when the thought first surfaced. Something that didn't ask me to have all the answers before I'd even worked out the questions.
The Experience I Bring
Building something in this space carries responsibility. I take that seriously.
Frontline practice. I spent five years as a Focussed Intervention Worker at Forward Leeds, part of Waythrough - one of the UK's leading addiction service providers. That role involved structured brief interventions, motivational support, and walking alongside people through the earliest and most precarious stages of recovery. I know what this work looks like from the inside of a service, not just from a distance.
Formal training. I hold an Open Awards Level 3 Certificate in Understanding and Responding to Substance Misuse (RQF) - the professional qualification underpinning my practice.
Coaching credentials. I work as a sobriety coach through my practice, Phenomenal Sobriety, and hold affiliations with BeeSober and Creative Counsellors.
Lived experience. Eight years of personal sobriety. I understand the terrain of early recovery - the ambivalence, the false starts, the moments when the right word at the right time makes all the difference - because I have lived it.
Research and professional community. I am an applicant to the SSA Lived Experience Panel and a member of the Society for the Study of Addiction. I write on alcohol harm, recovery culture, and barriers to help-seeking as an Executive Contributor at BRAINZ Magazine and as a contributor to Sober Curator.
How Solomon Is Being Built
Solomon is being developed with the same care I would want applied to anything touching people at their most vulnerable.
Sol - the AI companion at the platform's core - is built on motivational interviewing principles, the FRAMES framework, and established clinical guidance. The prompt architecture has been designed with clinical input, and the safeguarding framework has been developed to professional standards.
We are currently in a controlled-access beta phase, working with a small group of testers whose feedback is directly shaping the product. Solomon has been submitted for UK innovation funding consideration, and we are building the evidence base that will support future partnerships with NHS pathways and other institutional commissioners.
This is not a product built to move fast. It is a product built to get it right.
A Final Word
I am aware that AI and mental health is a space where trust has to be earned, not assumed. I welcome scrutiny. I welcome clinical challenge. And I welcome conversation with anyone working in the addiction and recovery space who wants to understand what we are building and why.
If that's you, I'd be glad to hear from you.
David Henzell is the founder of Phenomenal Sobriety and the creator of Solomon. He is based between the UK and Warsaw, Poland.
