Oftentimes when individuals complete addiction treatment at a rehab facility, they still need assistance making a successful transition from rehab back into the real world. This is especially true for individuals that have attended inpatient treatment with 24/7 care and monitoring. Without extra assistance, going back into regular society after rehab can shock people and cause them to relapse. Luckily, sober living homes are places where people that are new to addiction recovery can go to help them transition back into society after rehab.
What Are Sober Living Homes?
Sober living homes are apartment-like facilities where individuals that have just completed addiction treatment can live. The purpose of sober living homes is to provide people that are new to addiction recovery the support that they need to successfully transition back into society.
Benefits of Sober Living Homes
There are many benefits of living sober in a sober living home facility. The descriptions below detail the top benefits of living in a sober living facility.
1. Community and Support
All sober living home residents are people that are new to addiction recovery. Therefore, sober living residents can feel comfortable confiding in one another about their addiction recovery journeys and struggles.
Sober living home residents are also able to feel comfortable giving one another advice on how to maintain sobriety. This helps sober living home residents bond with one another on a deep level and build a sense of community.
Such bonds also help sober living home residents further build upon their addiction support networks. This is ideal, as the people within your addiction support network should be people that understand you. It’s also great to have people within your addiction support network that can truly empathize with your struggles. Who better to empathize with your struggles with addiction than other individuals that are in addiction recovery. Especially people who’ve also lived in sober living homes.
Having a solid support network that’s filled with individuals that know about and understand your addiction recovery journey could be the difference between relapsing and maintaining lifelong sobriety.
2. Support Groups and Extended Addiction Therapy
Another benefit of living sober in sober living homes is that sober living home facilities provide residents with addiction therapy. Extended addiction therapy can only help people that are new to addiction recovery maintain sobriety. This is because extended addiction therapy ensures that people that are new to addiction recovery are still aware of their addiction triggers and how to cope with them.
Sober living homes also provide their residents with addiction support group meetings. This is beneficial to sober living home residents because attending support groups while in recovery from addiction helps people proactively maintain sobriety.
3. Limited Access to Drugs and Alcohol
Sober living homes don’t allow residents to bring alcohol or drugs to the facility. No access to substances while at home makes remaining sober easier during the transition from rehab back into society. This is especially true since sober living home residents still have to face the temptation of drugs and alcohol when out and about in the world and not at their sober living homes.
4. Education, Job, and Transportation Assistance
Many sober living facilities provide their residents with life assistance as they transition back into the real world. For example, many sober living homes offer their residents transportation services around the area that they’re in.
Oftentimes, sober living home residents are supposed to use such transportation services to attend school or go job hunting. To incentivize such efforts, many sober living homes will also offer their residents tutoring or assistance applying to jobs. In fact, many sober living homes will offer their residents skills training and assistance writing their resumes just to help them get their lives back on track.
5. Restored Life Skills
Individuals that have been living in rehab facilities during inpatient treatment are often rusty on their life skills. Therefore, staying in sober living homes gives such people the opportunity to practice their life skills in the real world. Plus, residents still have the security of addiction therapists and other people in addiction recovery that they can turn to at any given time for assistance.
6. Independence
The purpose of sober living homes is to help people make a smooth transition back into society after rehab. Therefore, sober living homes make sure to allow their residents to come and go as they please.
Such independence at sober living homes acts as a perfect middle ground between rehab and regular society. This is because when out and about, sober living residents have total freedom and are left to their own devices.
On the flip side, when sober living residents return home, they do so at a housing community that bans alcohol and drugs. Sober living facilities even guide residents by providing them with support group meetings and extended addiction therapy.
6. Structure
While sober living homes allow their residents to roam around the world and be independent, they still provide structure. One way that sober living homes provide their residents with structure is by banning alcohol and drugs in the facilities. This makes it harder for sober living home residents to relapse.
Sober living homes also provide their residents with structure by making them pay rent. Sober living home residents pay rent to make the transition to real-world responsibilities easier. Sober living homes will keep residents accountable through mandatory chores and making sure they stay tidy.
Forcing structure into the lives of people that are new to addiction recovery is a definite benefit of sober living homes. This is because many people that are new to addiction recovery will become complacent about their sobriety.
Many people that are new to addiction recovery are also not used to dealing with regular life issues. Therefore, forcing structure into their lives will help them get used to normal life.
7. Medical Support
While sober living homes offer their residents freedom and independence, they also provide them with constant care. This care can come in the form of medical support. For example, many sober living homes have physicians and addiction treatment specialists on standby at any given time. That way, if sober living home residents ever suddenly need medical attention, they can receive it.
8. Reduced Risk of Relapse
Returning to the real world after rehab is an overwhelming experience. It’s such an overwhelming experience that most people aren’t able to go through it without relapsing.
Living in sober living homes makes relapsing after leaving rehab less likely. This is because of all of the guidance and support that individuals will be receiving while living in sober living homes. Therefore, living in sober living homes is a happy medium between having total, over-the-top supervision to being completely left on your own.
9. Improved Relationships
Individuals will have some assistance in getting their lives back on track after rehab while living in sober living homes. As a result, sober living home residents will be able to better show past family and friends the progress that they’ve made in their sobriety and lives. This, in turn, will make it easier for sober living home residents to repair past broken relationships.
10. A New Lease On Life
Ultimately, sober living homes make it more likely that individuals will successfully transition back into the real world after rehab. Not only that, but staying in sober living homes increases the speed at which individuals will be able to achieve success and stability in their lives after rehab. Thus, in a way, sober living homes give people that are new to addiction recovery a new chance at life.
Stay in Sober Living Homes After Completing Addiction Treatment At Grace Land Recovery
he best way to increase the chances that you’ll achieve sobriety and maintain it long-term is to attend rehab at a high-quality addiction treatment center. Then, follow that stay in treatment with a stay in a sober living home to ensure long-lasting sobriety.
A high-quality addiction treatment center in Memphis, Tennessee is Grace Land Recovery. We here at Grace Land Recovery are considered a high-quality addiction treatment center because we offer a wide range of evidence-based addiction treatment programs, therapies, and clinical schedule groups. For example, we offer our patients addiction therapies that range from cognitive-behavioral therapy to anger management therapy, to trauma therapy, and more.
Find Solace Through Sober Living At Grace Land Recovery
Here at Grace Land Recovery, we also offer our patients addiction treatment programs that are specialized by substances. For example, our addiction treatment programs are specialized in every substance addiction from alcohol addiction to prescription drug addiction, to heroin addiction, and more. We even offer patients unique group services such as ones that focus on nutrition, spirituality, HIV education, and more.
Another fact about us here at Grace Land Recovery that makes us an ideal place to attend rehab is that we specialize in dual diagnosis treatment. Therefore, we can treat mental illness on top of treating substance use disorders. It’s because we understand that the root reason for why people start misusing substances in the first place is often mental illness.
To learn more about us here at Grace Land Recovery and our addiction treatment programs, therapies, and services, contact us today! Once you take the step towards attending addiction treatment, you can take the step towards living in sober living homes, and eventually back in the real world as a sober individual.