The focus is to keep the person from drugs and alcohol while they adjust, so house rules typically set early curfews for people in this stage. Sober housing is a short-stay living arrangement to support sobriety, especially after a relapse. This type of sober living home is best for persons who do not need a high level of support to get back to their sobriety goals. Usually, the people who stay in sober housing have a robust support system, work, or the ability to become self-sufficient after their stay.

• You can practice relationship skills and share experiences as you and your house-mates expand your skills in the outside world and return to a safe home base.
• Specific nuances of each rule depend on the sober living home or manager.
• Maintaining sobriety can be a difficult process, however, a sober living house may provide you with the kind of structure and support you’ll need to maintain your sobriety.

However, you might be wondering what happens now that the detox is over, you’ve completed your stay at an addiction treatment center, and it is time to go home. Sober living homes in particular do not initiate rehabilitation, but typically end it and solidify abstinence. In isolation, sober living homes cannot cure addiction which requires MAT, psychiatric care, or other intensive types of care.

Why Might a Longer Stay Be Beneficial?

Addiction is now recognized as a debilitating, chronic medical disorder, which is often linked to trauma, depression, and other co-occurring conditions. Ethos Recovery makes that choice easy with its friendly environment and focuses on personal wellness. We have trained professionals, credentials, and a strong community of new residents and alumni ready to support you in your journey. You can also look into Oxford Houses, which provide all recovering users the opportunity to develop comfortable sobriety without relapse. Julia Childs Heyl is a clinical social worker who focuses on mental health disparities, the healing of generational trauma, and depth psychotherapy.

For instance, stress is a trigger, and one cannot avoid every stress or event outside their control. However, one can set up filters to prevent those stressors or practice healthy coping mechanisms. This measure was taken from Gerstein et al. (1994) and was defined as number of arrests over the past 6 months.

How Long Can You Stay in a Sober-Living House?

Sober living programs are set up to be flexible, allowing residents to live on-site only for as long as they need. Lastly, halfway houses are often owned or sponsored by the state, while most sober-living houses are owned privately or by treatment facilities that want to provide continuing support for their patients. And lastly, before leaving your sober home, you should consult with people you trust. Your sponsor or therapist would be able to assess whether your foundation of recovery is strong enough for you to transition out of sober living and into independent life. If you have consulted with people you trust and they have agreed that you are ready, it’s probably a good time for you to leave your sober living program.

The same method is applied to obtain the drug status of the network member; the amount of contact is multiplied by the pattern of drug use and averaged across network members. Central to recovery in SLHs is involvement in 12-step sober house mutual help groups (Polcin & Henderson, 2008). However, some houses will allow other types of activities that can substitute for 12 step groups, provided they constitute a strategy for maintaining ongoing abstinence.

How Does Sober Living Work?

Many sober houses also have agreements with residents, requiring them to attend 12-step programs or similar support groups. Outpatient programs, such as Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHP) or Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP), still provide participants with ongoing therapy and, in some cases, medical care. However, recovering addicts in outpatient programs do not live at those treatment facilities and may return home at the end of each day’s scheduled sessions. The phrase “drug rehab” is a catch-all term for the variety of services available for treating substance use disorders, including alcohol and drug addiction. However, within the scope of rehab, there is a whole range of programs that offer varying levels of care. How long you stay depends on the sober-living facility and your progress in recovery.

• On the other hand, sober living homes are not typically funded by the government or affiliated with public programs.
• Former residents also visit during these sessions to share their experiences and encourage newer residents.
• Therefore, residents battling addiction still need help from rehab specialists, whether in outpatient rehab or continuing care.