Halfway houses also typically offer additional recovery, mental health, educational, and medical services that help individuals get acclimated to their new lives. Both sober living houses and halfway houses play important roles in the recovery process, but they cater to different needs and stages of recovery. Halfway houses are more structured and often a step right after rehabilitation or a period of incarceration.
- Additionally, a sober living home may require you to be employed, actively seeking employment, or attending educational advancement.
- Sober living homes may also offer specialized programming to advance our sobriety.
- You need to communicate where you are and what you’re doing so someone knows how to help you if you need it.
- Some of the transitional ‘supports’ are considered transferable in such instances.
- Regular drug testing guarantees compliance with this cardinal rule, offering an additional layer of answerability within these shared living quarters.
- Sober living homes and halfway houses share several commonalities, starting with purpose.
Sober Living Houses vs. Halfway Houses
Additionally, a sober living home may require you to be employed, actively seeking employment, or attending educational advancement. However, these curfews are generally individual-specific, dependent on where you are in recovery.2 You are required to be civil with housemates and supply your food and toiletries. If a treatment center owns a sober living home, the treatment center may hire staff in the home, but this is rarely a clinical staff member. Instead, this staff monitors compliance with rules and may transport residents to treatment, work, or the grocery store. Some states reserve halfway houses for people moving from long-term incarceration back into their communities.
What to Know About the Sober Living House
Most residents of these homes have recently completed an inpatient or outpatient treatment program. Early on in recovery, staying in a sober living home is an effective relapse prevention approach. It’s easier to resist the urge to relapse into drug-using habits when you have round-the-clock access to assistance and are in a substance-free environment. Sober living homes are constructed more like private dwellings, providing residents with greater privacy and comfort. Both sober and halfways houses can be invaluable transitional housing arrangements for recovering addicts.
- The structured environment includes mandatory participation in therapy sessions, group meetings, and sometimes even employment or educational activities as a condition of residency.
- People are placed in halfway houses as a result of court orders in some situations.
- Halfway houses give a transitional period in a structured environment to enhance the probability of life success.
- Do you want independence but feel like you aren’t ready to be entirely on your own?
- Additionally, maintaining your sobriety typically requires a home that is free of substances.
- So when getting back on our feet and in recovery, cooking and cleaning for ourselves is part of a healthy recovery plan.
Sober Homes
Halfway houses are a transitional point between an institution or facility and everyday community life. People may transition to a halfway house after serving a prison sentence or completing an inpatient rehab program. Sometimes, a person may be court-ordered to stay in a halfway house for a specified time. The goal of a sober living residence is to provide a secure and supportive environment for individuals to maintain sobriety.
Male Residences
Some are on the campus where drug and alcohol addiction treatment is provided, and others are independent homes, apartments or condos. The number of residents depends on the size of the home or licensed beds in a facility. In most sober-living environments, bedrooms are shared, but some do provide individual rooms. Typically, there are rules about shared living spaces and individual room maintenance and chores, visitor hours, meal times, curfews and Twelve Step meeting requirements. Also like other sober-living environments, halfway houses generally have systems in place to keep residents sober, and drugs tests are usually administered to monitor for any substance use. They also often come with additional mental health, medical, recovery or educational services that help people get accustomed to their new lives.
New concepts that combine scattered-site housing are now being embraced as the concept of transitional housing has evolved. Some of the transitional ‘supports’ are considered transferable in such instances. Transitional housing programs have traditionally been located in dedicated, building-specific environments with more shared space and less private space than permanent housing surroundings. The holistic aspect of the program provided me with all the tools I need to both support my recovery in sobriety as well as grow as a human being.
However, walking back into the same life — the same home, surrounded by the same people and often in the same high-risk environment — is never ideal. Those who lack a Halfway House vs Sober Living stable, drug-free and alcohol-free living environment are at high risk of relapsing. Leaving the safety of treatment for a temptation-packed daily life is a huge step! Through a combination of accountability and education, this supportive housing solution helps us prepare for tough real-world scenarios after treatment.