When celebrity magazines reported that actor Owen Wilson had hired a “sober buddy” instead of going in for an extended stay in rehab after a suicide attempt, Doug Caine’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

A sober buddy is a person who shadows recovering substance abusers to keep them clean, and Caine is founder and president of Hollywood-based Sober Champion, a company that provides the sober shadows. So he was constantly fielding calls from journalists seeking more information about the alternative treatment and from people seeking jobs as sober buddies.

When it came to the journalists, Caine first set them straight regarding the terminology. The relationship is a business arrangement instead of a friendship.

“We charge clients over $500 a day,” he said. “We’re not buddies. The preferred term is ‘sober companion.'”

Rates vary from $550 a day to $1,500 a day, depending on the qualifications of the sober companion.

Those types of numbers motivated many of the job seekers, but Caine painted such a bleak picture of the work that all but a few remained interested.

“I would tell them to keep their day job and don’t expect a call from me for six months,” he said. “And I would tell them when I do call at 11 p.m. one night, be prepared to get on a plane at 6 a.m. the next morning.”

The plane trip, he explained, would be to accompany a recovering substance abuser on a flight. And part of the job would be to accept verbal attacks as the client likely will excoriate the sober companion with all manner of vile names.

Despite this, more than 50 people in Southern California work as the company’s local companions. All companions go through training, background checks and drug testing before they are allowed to take an assignment.

Sober Champion’s network includes nurses, therapists, substance abuse experts and, like Caine, former addicts.

Caine, 43, was a musician, but a drug habit that began in college eventually dominated his life. Soon he was missing gigs. Eventually, he sold his instruments to support his habit. He put his life back in order following a court mandated drug treatment program in 1999.

Caine stumbled into work as a sober companion in 2003 when he shadowed a recovering alcoholic on a business trip as a favor to the person’s therapist.

Caine has since built the business from a one man shop in Los Angeles to a network of nearly 70 sober companions with offices in New York and other cities. A London bureau was opened recently.

It’s still a very small but growing business. Caine said the company generated $35,000 in revenue in the first full year. For 2006, that figure rose to $90,000 and this year Caine said it is on track to generate more than $300,000.

Caine said while the company’s customer base has included celebrities, the most typical client is a high net worth individual or the relative of one.

Joseph LaBrie, an associate professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University, said the method seems to have some value.

“What we do know is that the best way to avoid relapse is to avoid high-risk situations,” LaBrie said. “To have a person there saying ‘you are walking into a situation that is going to trigger you to use,’ is probably not a bad thing.”