Who We Are.
At Epic Journey, we are a passionate team committed to supporting those facing addiction and mental health challenges. Based in Newport Beach, CA, we offer comprehensive services to empower individuals on their recovery journeys. Our mission is deeply personal, rooted in the loss of founder Preston Durnford’s brother, Dustin, to a fentanyl overdose in 2019 and his father to suicide in 2015.
Our founder.
Preston Durnford, our founder, brings over a decade of leadership and experience in the behavioral health field. He has owned and operated multiple levels of care including sub-acute detox programs, primary mental health facilities, outpatient treatment centers, and long-term recovery programs. With more than eleven years of sobriety, Preston’s personal journey is woven into his professional mission—proving that healing, reinvention, and long-term recovery are possible.
Preston’s life has been shaped by profound loss: his father’s suicide and his brother’s fentanyl overdose. These experiences deepened his commitment to building programs that support individuals and families through the realities of addiction, trauma, and major life transition. He is the published author of The Epic Journal, a reflective tool used by clients and treatment centers to create structure, intention, and momentum in their healing.
Today, Preston serves as the Chief Program Officer at Pacific Shores Recovery and is the founder of both Epic Journey Recovery and Epic Journey Wellness, the latter being a fully virtual, nationwide coaching and wellness company. His background includes high-level coaching, trauma-informed recovery work, mindfulness practices, and hands-on experience with individuals coming directly from the streets, failure-to-launch young adults, high performers, and families seeking stability and direction.
An avid skydiver and freediver, Preston believes in experiential growth and developing a life rooted in purpose, resilience, and alignment. His approach blends lived experience with over a decade of professional training, integrating structure, emotional regulation, nervous system support, career development, and holistic well-being. Preston’s work continues to reflect his father’s advice: “If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist”—a philosophy that guides every step of the Epic Journey.
Our Approach.
Our approach is personal, relational, and experience-driven. Preston creates meaningful connections with each client through shared experiences, not just conversations, building trust, emotional safety, and long-term bonds that can last for years. Guided by his own lived challenges and over a decade of professional training, he blends recovery coaching, structure, nervous system support, and purpose-based guidance with the expertise of licensed clinicians and functional medicine professionals.
For clients who are open and clinically appropriate, we also provide preparation and integration around plant-medicine experiences—never as a one-size-fits-all solution, but as an individualized option within a broader healing journey.
what we do.
We help individuals reprogram the patterns that drive addiction by teaching them how to understand their mind, their biology, and their emotional responses. Our work builds compassion for self, emotional resilience, and the ability to cope without substances. We mentor clients to see a brighter future, to become dreamers and doers, and to reconnect with joy, purpose, and abundance. Our professional intervention process has supported hundreds of families in guiding loved ones into the right level of care, and through our partnership with Pacific Shores Recovery, we help connect individuals to detox, residential treatment, outpatient programs, and sober living when needed.
community and support.
Epic Journey is committed to giving back through events and fundraisers for non-profits that align with our mission. We aim to raise awareness and resources for those struggling with addiction and mental health challenges, fostering a supportive community of hope and healing.
At Epic Journey, we’re more than just a service—we are a community making a meaningful impact in the lives of those we serve. Together, we create a brighter future for individuals facing addiction and mental health challenges.