What Did We Learn from Our Study on Sober Living Houses and Where Do We Go from Here? PMC

SLHs provide a continuum of care and improve your chances of staying abstinent so that you don’t have to become a statistic of relapse. The terms Sober Living Home and Transitional Living Home are interchangeable in the addiction recovery industry, but for purposes of this article the term Sober Living Home (SLH) will be used. SLHs are houses or apartments that provide a safe, supportive and structured living environment to individuals new to recovery.

Nevertheless, we will draw upon a longitudinal study as well as other relevant statistics in order to demonstrate the great benefit of sober living homes. Sober living houses can foster peer encouragement, camaraderie, character development, and accountability in residents. The outcomes of living in such an environment can include positive health, behavioral, and relationship changes. If you or a loved one is considering enrolling in a transitional housing program, it’s normal to wonder about the effectiveness of a sober living program and if it could potentially harm or help a person in recovery. In addition to studying a larger number of offenders, we hope to explore an innovative intervention designed to improve outcomes for these residents in terms of employment, arrests, and other areas. Our intervention modifies motivational interviewing to address the specific needs of the offender population (Polcin, 2006b).

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Additionally, residents must agree to a number of rules when they move in. Establishing a sober lifestyle is difficult during the early stages of recovery. You need somewhere safe you can go after treatment, a place where you’ll be free of triggers and surrounded by social support. For a lot of people in recovery, moving into a sober living home after treatment makes the difference between going back to their old habits or continuing on the path of sobriety. Most people with a SUD have followed their own will, have done as they pleased, and are not used to following rules. Having accountability and responsibility for your actions are a large part of learning life is less what a person wants to do—and more of what is good for the community and how to live a healthy lifestyle.

To have the best chance for effectively recovering from addiction or substance abuse and remaining sober long-term, individuals should look for drug-free, stable housing that will support their recovery. As a next step in our research on SLHs we plan to assess how they are viewed by various stakeholder groups in the community, including house managers, neighbors, treatment professionals, and local government officials. Interviews will elicit their knowledge about addiction, recovery, and community based recovery houses such as SLHs. Their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of SLHs in their communities should provide data that can be used to modify houses to improve acceptance and expand to serve more drug and alcohol dependent persons.

Rules & Regulations of a Sober Living House

The Sacramento County community boasted a still-impressive average length of stay of 166 days. Today, sober houses are “free-standing,” independently owned and operated. They’re not licensed by an official body, nor do they provide licensed professional services onsite. In a recent analysis of CSTL residents we looked at psychiatric severity as a predictor of alcohol and drug outcome using growth curve models (Korcha et al (2010). We found that a subgroup of about a third of the residents had significantly higher psychiatric severity than other residents and had significantly worse outcomes. Our work on identifying and describing these residents with worse outcome is continuing.

• 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.
• Private owners usually own these homes, but charities and businesses may also own sober living houses.
• “Because severity was low there was limited room to improve on these measures.
• The staff doesn’t provide any clinical or medical services, but many residents attend outpatient treatment or participate in recovery-based groups while they live there.
• They’ll be able to give you the best recommendations because of their familiarity with your specific circumstances.
• While a sober living house doesn’t offer individual or group counseling, it offers structure and support to help you maintain your sobriety.

The study noted that 68 percent of the Berkeley participants and 82 percent of the Sacramento County participants had left the homes by the 12-month mark. Arguably, the residents who stayed past that time may have been the ones who were sober house struggling more with complete abstinence and needed extra time, driving down the rate over that final six-month period. There are a lot of variables in play when it comes to sober housing and determining what constitutes success.

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

The Sober Living Network, an organization that sets standards for sober living homes, maintains a list of approved facilities. Facilities that are members of their Sober Living Coalition are guaranteed to be safe, well-managed, and ethical. If you are interested in researching sober living homes near you, you can consult their directory via their free search tool.