If today is dangerous: crisis routes — never paywalled.
A navigation system for the people who lived with the drinking.
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Editorial · The rules

Editorial standards

This page exists so that a reader, a journalist, a clinician, or a regulator can see the rules this network operates under in one place. If a page on this site or any of the Six Doors sites breaks one of these rules, that is a mistake. Tell me and I will fix it.

1. Independence

No rehab pays this network. No broker pays this network. No referral fee, kickback, finder's fee, commission, or sponsorship payment is received from any clinic, treatment provider, intermediary, or referral business mentioned anywhere on the Six Doors sites. James Roberts, the author, has no equity, ownership, board seat, or advisory role at any treatment facility, broker, or referral business.

If that ever changes, the page will say so at the top in plain English before any other content. That has not happened and is not planned.

2. What we will not invent

The bots and the encyclopedia will not invent:

If a fact cannot be sourced or verified, it is not on the page. Where a number is given (mortality rate, seizure rate, prevalence) the source is linked.

3. Sources we cite

In order of weight on this network:

  1. NICE clinical guidelines (UK)
  2. NHS clinical pages and 111 service
  3. Royal College of Psychiatrists guidance and reports
  4. Care Quality Commission and equivalent regulators (Care Inspectorate Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, RQIA Northern Ireland)
  5. Peer-reviewed clinical literature (Cochrane, BMJ, Lancet, Addiction)
  6. Charity-sector research (Adfam, Alcohol Change UK, Turning Point)
  7. First-person experience, clearly labelled as such

Where guidelines disagree (rare but real), the page says so and explains why.

4. What plain English means here

The Six Doors network is written for someone in week one. That means:

Banned words on this network: journey, wellness, empower, transform, embrace, warrior, tribe, miracle, unlock (as a feeling verb — “unlock your potential”), community (as a verb), game-changer, paradigm shift, next-level. Externally: “moat” (we use “independence”).

5. Crisis routes are never paywalled

Every page on every site links to crisis routes — UK 999, Samaritans 116 123, NHS 111, A&E. These links sit above the fold and never sit behind any paywall, login, or paid subscription. They never will.

6. The paywall, explained

The bots on each site offer a free conversation length, then a one-time payment to continue. There is no subscription. There is no account. The price is £49, one-time, paid once, the same across every site in the network.

The paywall exists because running the bots costs money — model inference, hosting, content moderation. It does not exist to gate medical safety information. The encyclopedia, the crisis routes, and the directory information on every site are free and will stay free.

If the paywall ever fails to deliver the promised conversation length, email [email protected] within fourteen days. Refund, no argument.

7. Names of clinics

When a UK rehab clinic is named on this network it is named because:

Naming a clinic is not an endorsement. It is acknowledgement that the building exists, takes patients, and can be phoned directly. The reader is expected to verify each clinic before contacting it. Ownership, leadership, admissions criteria, and clinical culture change. Names are reviewed periodically and the date of last review is on each page.

A clinic appearing on this network has not paid to appear. A clinic missing from this network has not refused to pay.

The list reflects what was visible, verifiable, and operating directly at the time of writing.

8. Corrections

If a fact on this network is wrong, email [email protected] with the page URL and what is wrong. Corrections are made within seven days where possible. Where a correction is significant, the page carries a dated note at the bottom recording what was changed and when.

This applies to clinical facts, named individuals, named clinics, prices, sources, and dates. It does not apply to opinion or judgement, which the reader is welcome to disagree with.

9. Who writes this

Every page on the Six Doors network is written or edited by James Roberts. There is no anonymous staff. There are no ghostwriters. AI assistance is used in drafting, research, and review — every page is read line by line by a named human (James) before publication.

If a page does not have James's name at the bottom and a "last reviewed" date, it is not published.

10. Privacy

Bot conversations are not used to train models. Conversations are not sold. Conversations are not shared with rehabs, brokers, or any third party. The privacy policy on each site says exactly what is stored, for how long, and why. If you want a conversation deleted, email and it is deleted.

11. Medical limits

This network is not a clinician. The bots are not clinicians. The encyclopedia is not medical advice. If you need medical advice, see a doctor. If you are physically dependent on alcohol and considering stopping, see your GP or NHS 111 — the page on dangerous withdrawal signs explains why. Crisis goes to 999.

12. Conflicts of interest, in full

James Roberts, author of this network, has the following potentially relevant interests, declared in full:

If any of these change, this page will be updated within seven days.

13. Clinic Compare Brief — refund and decline criteria

The Clinic Compare Brief is a paid product (£149 introductory, £195 thereafter) sold on this site. It carries an explicit refund policy because it is structured to refuse to take money in situations where a clinic-comparison document is not the right answer.

Refund window. After reading the buyer's intake answers, James will refund the buyer in full within one working day and decline to issue a brief if any of the five published triggers are present. One working day, not 24 hours, is the standard: this is a professional-services promise, not a consumer-tech promise. The clock is honoured even if James is on a flight at the 23-hour mark.

The five published triggers:

  1. Acute medical risk requiring immediate hospital or psychiatric stabilisation rather than scheduled private detox — severe DTs, recent seizure within hours, an acute alcohol-related medical emergency. Refund and route to A&E or NHS 111.
  2. Active suicidality or active psychosis reported in the intake. Rehab comparison is not the operational question. Refund and route to a consultant psychiatrist, A&E, or NHS crisis team.
  3. The buyer is the drinker themselves and is in an acute hot-state — intoxicated, unstable, in immediate distress. Hot-state is not cold-state by design. Refund and route to the £49 bot or directly to crisis routes. Bypasses the entire planning surface.
  4. The clinical picture has no defensible UK private answer under the buyer's stated budget and geography. Refund and name the alternative pathway — NHS specialist team, eating-disorder unit, gambling-specific provider, neurology referral, overseas option with caveats.
  5. The drinker is stated as "Resistant" in the intake and the buyer is attempting to force an admission against the drinker's known wishes. Comparison-buying for a resistant adult is the wrong question; the right question is the family-side approach. Refund and route to theirdrinking.guide, partner.guide, or CRAFT-trained family practitioners.

Refund mechanic. Full £149 refunded via the original Stripe transaction, with a plain-English email naming the better path. No claw-back of work done. No partial refunds. No upsell on the refund email.

SLA promise — and what happens if it is missed. Every brief is delivered as a PDF to the buyer's inbox within 72 hours of intake submission (not 72 hours of payment — the clock starts when James has the information he needs to write). If the 72-hour window is missed for any reason, the £149 is refunded in full the same day and the brief still ships at no charge in the next available window. Refund-on-miss is structural, not goodwill: the buyer paid for an SLA the network did not honour and is made whole; the work continues because the buyer's situation has not changed.

The refund line and the SLA promise are published on the landing page and repeated in the intake confirmation. They are operational policy, not marketing claims. James will not monetise people in chaos.

If any clinic, broker or third party offers James money — referral fees, commission, finder's fees, sponsored inclusion, white-label arrangements, ad slots, advisory retainers conditional on coverage — the offer is declined. Every declined offer is recorded internally with date, source category and amount, and is published in the next Annual Transparency Post (see section 14).

13a. No expedited tier — same-day, rush, and bypass-fee policy

The 72-hour delivery window is the standard service level for every buyer at every price point. There is no priority queue, no rush upsell, no same-day bypass at any price.

Same-day, rush, or bypass-fee requests — including substantial sums offered (typically by HNW individuals, corporate buyers, or agents acting for them) to write a brief outside the 72-hour window — are declined. The £49 bot session covers immediate operational framing where the situation is time-pressured.

Every bypass offer is logged internally with date, source category, £ value offered, and a one-line reason. The aggregate count, aggregate £ value walked away from, and source-category breakdown are surfaced in the Annual Transparency Post under the dedicated category Bypass-fee offers refused. Names are redacted in year one.

The reasoning is symmetrical to the no-commission lock. The £149 buyer needs to know that the £1,000 buyer cannot buy James faster. A recurring inbound the network refuses on principle is operational evidence that the independence claim is real. Refusing privately is a discipline; refusing-and-publishing-the-tally is the audit.

14. Annual Transparency Post — what we walked away from

An independence claim is only worth what it can be audited against. Once a year — first post end of Q4 2026, then every December — partner.guide publishes a Transparency Post covering the previous twelve months. Each post lists, by category, the commercial offers that were made to this network and refused.

The format is the Categorised Audit:

The Transparency Post is the audit. The independence line on every page is the claim; this is the proof. If the post is ever quietly skipped, missed or softened, that is itself a breach of these editorial standards and readers should treat it as one.

Internal log start date: 29 April 2026. First Transparency Post: December 2026.

15. Confidential Containment Brief — decline-and-confidentiality criteria

The Confidential Containment Brief is a paid product (£295, application only) sold on this site for HNW firms whose senior executive has, or is about to have, an alcohol problem visible enough to threaten the firm's reputation and its regulator-facing position. It carries an explicit decline policy, symmetrical to section 13, because it is structured to refuse to take money in situations where a written reconciliation is not the right answer.

An application gate sits in front of the product. After reading the firm's application, James will decline the brief in writing within one working day, before any payment link is issued, if any of the following are present:

Decline-and-route notes are bounded by independence policy: they name only NHS lines (999 / 111 / Samaritans 116 123) for acute risk; the firm's own occupational health provider; the firm's instructed employment counsel; and the network's own surfaces (the £49 bot, sober.guide, partner.guide, Clinic Compare). They do not name private psychiatrists, addiction-specialist consultants, residential clinics, EAP providers, insurer-panel advisers, or crisis-communications firms. The reasoning is symmetrical to the no-commission lock: the moment the network names a private external provider in a decline note, that provider has a commercial reason to send firms back our way, and the independence claim degrades. Crisis routing remains the only exception, and it is NHS only. Target decline rate at the application gate: 40–50%, year one.

The brief carries a structural confidentiality protocol, which the firm should know before applying:

If a firm, EAP, insurer, OH provider, law firm, broker or third party offers James money for inclusion in or shape of any Containment Brief — referral fees, commission, finder's fees, sponsored framing, white-label arrangements, retainer conditional on coverage — the offer is declined and recorded in the same internal log as the Clinic Compare offers. Every refused offer is published in the next Annual Transparency Post (section 14). The independence claim on the Containment Brief and the independence claim on the Clinic Compare Brief share the same audit.

Last reviewed April 2026. Maintained by James Roberts. If this page is wrong, email [email protected] and I fix it.

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