Is your child considering sober living?
Are you interested in the concept but not sure what is involved?
In this article, Jace Horwitz and Thomas Rees share their thoughts on how living with others on the same path can help your child maintain long-term recovery.
According to Jace Horwitz, Executive Director, Herbert House Sober Living Environment Inc.:
“Sober living is a communal living environment that offers support and accountability for like-minded individuals seeking to practice a safe, supportive sober lifestyle.
Anyone who is willing to maintain sobriety and wants the structure of a sober community while continuing to work on their recovery is qualified to enter a sober home provided their primary addiction is drugs and/or alcohol.
Statistics have shown that the longer a person remains in a treatment/ recovery setting, the better their chances of maintaining sobriety.
A treatment center is designed to separate the individual from their drug of choice and address any health issues that arise due to chemical abuse at the same time, introducing the patient to 12 step program exposure. Once the patient leaves the treatment cocoon, the original stressors of real-life situations need to be addressed and navigated while maintaining and practicing 12-step recovery.
Sober living offers this vital support and a constant reminder of how to live recovery first.”
Jace Horwitz, of Herbert House Sober Living Environment Inc., has owned and operated a 22 bed coed structured sober living environment since 1995. He is the past Board Member of the Sober Living Network and Los Angeles County Sober Living Coalition, and the past Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Sober Living Coalition for 8 years.
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According to Thomas Rees, CEO of Rees Networks LLC:
“Sober Living is a reference to a type of living arrangement that is generally appropriate for anyone who is exiting a detox facility or who has been at a treatment center after having been treated for any type of chemical dependency diagnosis including alcohol addiction (alcoholism) or drug abuse. Detox is usually a 3 to 5-day process, whereas treatment is more intensive with one-on-one and group counseling that lasts for 30-60-90 days or longer, depending on what one can afford or how long their habit has been going on.
The idea behind sober living is that it is a comfortable “step down” from detox or treatment.
Detox and treatment are highly structured programs that include full-time monitoring by doctors and nurses and often lock-down conditions, whereas a sober living house is more like a regular home, often in a family-type setting that has rules and some degree of structure, and plenty of support from other residents who are all chiefly trying to readjust to more freedom while staying sober. Absolute sobriety is always a requirement and is enforced by random drug and alcohol testing. Participants are encouraged to use sober living time as a time to strengthen their sobriety programs by attending AA meetings regularly and generally putting their lives back together. Guests are allowed additional freedom to begin perhaps attending outpatient services and progress towards ultimately getting back to work, attending school, or perhaps focusing on repairing family relationships.
Statistically, it is generally agreed upon that going straight back home to where all the problems began in the first place, and where all the bad influences are still in the immediate background with no monitoring in place, that up to 90% of patients relapse within a year (many much sooner). Sober living, on the other hand, provides some structure and support where the person is still going to have to deal with life’s pressures and stresses. Still, they will always be able to return to a home living environment that is safe, alcohol-free, and drug-free, and ideally full of supportive individuals experiencing similar feelings.
Learning how to live independently
In a nutshell, living in a sober house enables people who have quit drugs or alcohol to build up a substantial degree of confidence that they can live independently without using their former crutch.
Rents range from a few hundred dollars a month on the low side to up to $20,000 a month or more for some of the ritzy Malibu houses, but average $800 or so in the country’s urban areas. Food may or may not be included in that price. People live in a sober living — also referred to in different areas as halfway housing, 3/4 housing, recovery homes, transitional living, or after-treatment living — for anywhere from 30 days up to a year, with the average probably being about 90 days.”
Thomas Rees is CEO of Rees Networks LLC and founder of the largest online database and search engine for US sober livings called Sober Living Halfway House Search with over 5000 homes and growing at soberlivingsearch.com. He founded the company after leaving a 20-year career on Wall Street to own and operate sober livings, and he came to believe that with better access to sober living information, more people might take advantage of it.
What are your thoughts about this article? Let us know in the comments.
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Thanks for sharing this important information about SLE’s.
Sober Living homes also provide a much needed break for family members, as well. Family members often feel (or impose on themselves) pressure to “do whatever it takes” to help their loved one’s recovery, often foregoing their own recovery needs, the surface of which have only been scratched during the addict/alcoholic’s initial detox and/or treatment period. With the addict/alcoholic living in an SLE, the family members can “breathe,” too, and take the time they need to understand the science of the disease of addiction, to understand what has happened to them as a consequence of secondhand drinking/drugging, and to learn healthier coping / living skills, themselves.
I agree. Thanks for adding the family component, Lisa. We often overlook what the addiction is doing to the family. I know my daughter’s recovery was greatly enhanced by her time in a Sober Living Environment. The longer the stay in treatment and sober living, in my experience, the better the chance of recovery.
What Lisa says is very true. In fact it would be ideal if families could be invited to participate in the recovery process, and if they are that they do so, in order for them to learn how they have in fact been dragged into thinking and sometimes acting in a co-dependent or protective role for the family member who is addicted. Often the addict’s sickness has rubbed off on the family, and everybody has been affected in some negative fashion. Some parents do not want to participate in another family member’s treatment — they just want the addict “to get better”. It is more difficult when the family does not participate in treatment or at least attend a few Al-anon meetings, but these are things that the addict or alcoholic must learn to deal with also, and respect. Sometimes families feel like they have been put out enough, and as Lisa says, they just want to have some breathing room. The family member who has been sick needs to respect that and learn how he or she has been a source of worry for many years, and that it often takes years to re-establish “normal’ roles again. While the person in recovery sees their whole life as fresh and new, others may not trust this new way of life or be able to change their old ways of thinking for many years. Trust takes a long time to rebuild when it comes to years of past destructive habits.
Hi Thomas, Thank you for your comment. A sober living environment is an essential part of the treatment process for so many reasons. 28 to 30 days is not nearly enough time to repair the damage of substance abuse. Coming home to a familiar environment after such a short stay leaves the addict vulnerable to relapse. I don’t believe the new life skills have been internalized at that point. A SLE is helpful to the family so that they can work on their own recovery. Many parents are supportive, unfortunately there are some parents who will not only not participate, but unknowingly sabotage recovery by insisting their child is “normal” and can have a drink occasionally. They may also not be willing to be supportive and involved because that causes them to have to look at their own habits. There is no question that addiction is emotionally exhausting for the family, and respecting each other’s feelings is vital.
Great information, thanks.
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