What Exactly is Sober Living and Why Do People Go?
Not many people in the world have an opportunity to learn about what happens at an alcohol or drug treatment program, unless someone in their immediate family has had a problem and gone through the experience. Drug and alcohol treatment is better known as “rehab” (short for rehabilitation), and it is the process that someone who wants to stop drinking or using drugs usually agrees to be admitted to because their lives have become difficult and unmanageable, or some crisis has opened their eyes to their problem.
Treatment is generally an intensive process that takes place on hospital grounds where there are always Dr’s and Nurses on staff to help a patient with any immediate needs. Many people stay at treatment for usually 30, 60, or 90 days, depending on their individual situation, and it is a difficult process because patients are breaking habits that some of them have had for not just months or years, but sometimes even decades at a time.
A very important component to treatment that more and more people are learning about because of its higher success rate is called “Sober Living”. You may also have heard of the terms recovery housing, alternative housing, a halfway house, or even a ¾ house — and all these are essentially the same thing as sober living.
Sober living is a voluntary step that about 1 in 5 people take because it represents a step down from the treatment process rather than a sudden, full- fledged move back home. Statistically, of those people who go directly home from treatment thinking they are “cured”, they often find themselves facing the same problems and people that started their problem the first place, and about 90% of these patients relapse again within one year.
People who attend sober living generally do so from 3 to 12 months, and statistically their numbers tend to be closer to over 50% of the people maintaining their sobriety – a dramatic increase in the success rate. So what is it about sober living that gives people this extra edge, and how does it generally work?
Sober Living is appropriate for anybody who is exiting treatment but who feels that having a little bit of structure in their lives would be a positive thing. Additionally, living in a house where the other residents don’t drink or use drugs helps keep temptation a little further away than arm’s length. The strict “no using rules” are formal rules enforced by surprise drug and alcohol tests, and failing one would be something the person would feel mighty ashamed about after coming so far in treatment, and this is called a negative incentive.
When you take all the above and find yourself living in a nice apartment in a residential area of town with a bunch of other people who are struggling with the same problems, you all end up supporting one another in an ideal situation. The housemates become friends, and when one of them has an especially bad fight with a family member for example, and this is normally a trigger for him or her to go get a drink, he or she can rely on the rest of the group to talk it out with. Perhaps then, for the first time, that resident realizes when his father yells at him and calls him a loser, he does NOT have to go down the street and buy a bottle.
Sober livings generally cost anywhere between $350 and $20,000 per month (for the fancy Malibu executive sober livings), but the average sober living probably runs around $600-800 dollars, and may include food with the fees. You are not a tenant so you don’t have landlord-tenant rights, and that means the manager can throw you out of the house if you violate any of the rules, from not doing your chores to fighting or the like. These, also, are negative incentives that tend to keep people in line. Generally a house has from 6 -12 residents, where over 12 gets hectic and personalities may begin to clash. 6-12 is a good number, and most houses have two to a room.
So the wonderful thing about sober living and the reason it is so effective is the people living there still have to deal with the difficulties of life – perhaps not being able to find a job, or going through a divorce or financial difficulties – but ever so slowly their confidence grows and they come to realize they can deal with these hurdles without leaning on their old crutch. Because treatment is so tightly controlled, one does not have the chance to build up the same degree of self confidence during the first step in formal treatment. Now, when the sober living veteran goes back home, he or she is much stronger and more confident he or she can live life on sober terms. That is a big reason for the statistical difference of success, post sober living.
One more thing needs to be mentioned to everybody who is learning about sober living for the first time. It is slightly confusing, but the Department of Corrections in each state also sends their inmates to a type of house called a halfway house before they are released into the general population. Because of all the stress and tension, fights, and escapes, and robberies occur, and these events obviously disturb the neighbors greatly. If I had a Department of Corrections House next door to me I know I’d be nervous, too.
But because some sober livings are called halfway houses, neighbors get confused and often think that sober livings are responsible for these neighborhood disturbances, and that causes a real problem when a sober living wishes to open its doors in a new neighborhood. You will read about city councils going to great lengths to stop sober livings from opening, and this is an ongoing problem for those who want to manage sober living homes, and open them for the benefit of their fellow man who needs the help and sober living experience.
For now, sober livings are here to stay because they are protected under Federal Laws. And now that you are aware of what a great way this is for people with alcohol or drug problems to increase their odds of success, you can pass this knowledge on if you get the chance.
The author, Thomas Rees, left a 20 year career on Wall Street to own and operate sober livings and help make a difference in people’s lives. In so doing, he realized there was a bigger problem that confronts patients, and that is a lack of good information about sober living. In the past several years Tom has created Sober Living Halfway House Search , at the URL soberlivingsearch.com, a site which is designed to teach people about sober livings and eventually be the only site one will need to find a sober living or halfway house anywhere in the United States. The site currently has about 7000 listings and is the largest site on the internet or anywhere, and it is in the Top 1% of all US sites according to ALEXA traffic statistics.