Sober Home After Residential Treatment?

As explored in a previous post, Recovery Residences have been shown to significantly improve a person’s chances of maintaining sobriety after residential treatment.  We’re all too familiar with people who have overdosed after coming out of residential treatment.  They thought they could handle the same quantity of the drug/alcohol they used to do, however, after being clean for 30 -90 days, the body could no longer tolerate such amounts, resulting in an overdose.

While not always successful, residential inpatient programs for drug and alcohol use disorder provide an opportunity to remove a person from their environment so they may safely detox.  Later, intense individual and group therapy is used to treat the underlying issue(s).  It is both encouraging and heartwarming to witness people getting their lives back after treatment.  They feel on top of the world and ready to take on life’s challenges now that they’ve found sobriety.  But what happens when they leave treatment and go directly back home – usually to the same house, the same family and friends, the same community?  Will they be strong enough to avoid the temptation of drinking or using again?  Have they really put in enough time being sober and using the tools they recently learned in treatment?  Unfortunately, the statistics are not favorable.

Recovery Residences Offer Support

The reason recovery residences or sober homes are gaining so much recognition in the industry is because there is finally enough data to prove their efficacy as a critical component of the continuum of care model espoused by most addiction treatment specialists.  Sober living homes (or recovery residences) provide peer support in a substance-free environment that encourages residents to continue on their journey of recovery, without many of the pressures and temptations of their previous environment. Recovery residences provide the support, structure, guidance, and social connection that are critical to changing behavior patterns, developing life skills, and preventing isolation.  For many people, in any stage of recovery, sober living can make the difference between sobriety and relapse.