Considerations to Make when Finding Clean and Sober Housing for Men

For many people, breaking a drug or alcohol addiction takes more than a one to three month stay in a treatment facility. While drug rehab must end at some point, recovering addicts have yet to learn how to integrate drug-free living within a normal, everyday life routine. Clean and sober housing offers the type of transitional living environment needed to prepare recovering addicts for the real world.

Clean and sober housing for men provides a structured living environment that enables residents to ease into the pressures and demands of everyday life. As part of the structured setting, clean and sober housing programs have rules that must be followed for the duration of a person’s stay.

While it’s important for men to develop a sense of independence and responsibility while living in clean and sober housing, these programs still emphasize the importance of social supports. In turn, clean and sober housing facilities encourage their residents to operate as a support network that looks out for each of its members.

Sober Living Programs

Sober housing can help men transition into life after rehab, making new connections and lifestyle choices.

Addiction naturally breeds destructive lifestyle behaviors that work to support the user’s ongoing drug use. Over time, the addict’s world starts to revolve around getting and using drugs. Within a drug rehab environment, recovering addicts can distance themselves from all of the supports and social influences that drive drug-using behaviors.

Transitioning from the safe confines of drug treatment into daily real-world living can quickly overwhelm a person’s recovery efforts. While people with strong family and support networks stand a good chance of making this transition, others require a less abrupt reentry into everyday life.

According to the U. S. National Library of Medicine, healthy living environments greatly influence a person’s likelihood of continued abstinence once drug rehab treatment ends. Clean and sober housing programs provide many recovering addicts with that needed bridge between rehab treatment and real world living.

House Rules

Clean and sober living homes receive no state or federal funding and so have no real licensing requirements to fulfill. These facilities rather operate according to self-imposed rules and guidelines designed to promote drug-free living environments.

House rules play a big part in establishing structure and stability within sober living home environments. Men entering these programs must agree to follow these rules as a condition of their stay.

While each home sets its own protocols, sober living house rules typically include –

• No drugs or alcohol on the premises
• Drug and alcohol use is prohibited at all times
• No sexual-type interactions between house residents
• Program fee responsibilities
• Household chores
• Regular attendance at 12-Step support meetings

Social Support Approach

Clean and sober housing programs center around a social support approach where residents provide mutual support and encouragement for one another. Likewise, the 12-Step support group model plays a central role within the structure of a sober living household.

Men are encouraged, if not required, to

• Obtain a sponsor
• Actively be working a 12-Step recovery program
• Volunteer for service positions within 12-Step support group meetings
• Support and encourage new residents

In essence, residents develop a “giving back” lifestyle that promotes drug-free living and community involvement. In effect, the sober living experience works to provide recovering addicts with real-life experience in order to prepare them for re-entry into everyday life.