Let’s Ask the Experts: What is Sober Living?

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.