Top 5 Reasons to Try Sober Housing

The decision to enter drug treatment takes a considerable degree of courage. Successfully completing a treatment program takes hard-core grit. Considering the lengths a person endures to get well, ensuring continued success in recovery should be an ongoing goal in his or her daily life.

Sober housing programs go a long way towards helping recovering addicts follow through on their decision to get well and stay well. According to the U. S. National Library of Medicine, sober housing programs evolved out of the residential treatment model of the 1960s and 70s. Sober housing programs were put in place to provide ongoing support and guidance for people coming out of detox treatment.

The last thing someone in recovery needs is to leave treatment only to reenter a chaotic home environment. Even in cases of stable home environments, it can be difficult to maintain a drug-free mindset with family and friends when it’s so easy to fall back into old habits and routines.

For anyone considering sober housing programs, here are five reasons to try sober housing once drug treatment ends –

1. Focused on Recovery

Residents in a sober home carry out the affairs of everyday life, such as work, school and chores within a recovery-focused living environment. Someone who’s just come out of drug treatment must take on the same everyday responsibilities on top of his or her goal of staying drug-free.

Daily pressures and unexpected circumstances can quickly derail a person’s recovery efforts when necessary supports are lacking. Sober home environments help keep a recovering addict on course.

2. Building a Drug-Free Lifestyle

In sober living you can build a new network of friends who are also clean and sober.

Stability and structure become the key ingredients to a successful recovery. Sober housing programs operate according to a set of rules that all residents must follow. House rules may include –

• No alcohol or drug use
• Regular drug testing
• Completing household chores
• Regular attendance at 12-Step support group meetings
• Finding a sponsor

In effect, these rules create structure in the home and help residents build an everyday, drug-free lifestyle.

3. Real World Coping Strategies

Through the course of any one day, a sober living resident experiences many of the same interactions as someone who lives at home, works a job and socializes with friends. Conflicts, misunderstandings and disappointments will happen. Someone living in a sober home environment has the opportunity to work through these issues with like-minded peers rather than let them build-up and jeopardize his or her sobriety.

4. 12-Step Program

Sober home environments emphasize the importance of implementing the 12-Step program model within the daily workings of the home. Likewise, residents are required to not only attend 12-Step meetings, but also actively apply the 12-Step program approach within their daily life affairs.

5. Supportive Environment

More than anything else, having access to a support network can mean the difference between a successful recovery and a disappointing relapse. Not unlike the way addicts “support” one another’s drug-using behaviors, the residents within a sober housing program support one another’s efforts to live a drug-free lifestyle.