A sober living community is a neighborhood, building or private complex typically owned by a company or association, with the purpose of treating substance abuse and addiction through the method of sober living. Life at a sober living community is a bit different than in rehab.
Unlike other treatment facilities, sober living communities don’t necessarily treat their tenants as patients, but as tenants. Sober living communities are often meant to be post-rehab treatment facilities where people can go to transition from the sheltered life of residential treatment, to the harsher responsibilities of living alone or in a family.
Life at a sober living community is typically distinguished by their rules: they have strict curfews, require employment or active job seeking, and give each inhabitant a schedule by which they must orient themselves until they feel ready to leave the community. Sober living communities are almost always entirely voluntary (unless court-ordered), and have a very strict no-drug policy.
Life At A Sober Living Community Simplifies Real Living
Life at a sober living community is structured to provide autonomy and teach self-sufficiency, while providing a structured community living wherein all tenants are compelled to come together for regular group meetings, cooperate in community events and activities, and help each other in especially trying or troubling times. These are secular facilities, and treatment is typically not compounded with any 12-step programs or religious material. Instead, tenants are encouraged to seek alternative treatment and therapy outside.
Life at a sober living community emulates many of the responsibilities of real living. Tenants are expected to regularly pay for rent and utilities, stick to the schedules and deadlines, and do their own chores to keep their living space clean. This type of residency is specifically for people who find it difficult to stick to schedules after rehab, and require the incentive and assistance to develop self-discipline. Living in a sober environment can do wonders to people struggling with life outside of rehab.
Self-sufficiency is a major part of life at a sober living community. A huge challenge for people straight out of rehab is to adjust to the difficulties of making payments, meeting deadlines and fulfilling job obligations without the stress-relieving qualities of drug use. Because drugs completely neuter the neurological benefits of most healthy stress management techniques, it can take time and a lot of practice to get back into managing stress completely drug-free. That time is best spent in an environment that safely emulates life’s challenges.
All The Challenges Of Life Without The Temptations
Life at a sober living community is strictly drug-free. While relapses are not necessarily punished, hiding contraband or using on the premises can be enough to get kicked out of a sober living community and sent back into residential treatment. The pressure to not use is relieved by the support and motivation that living in a community of sobriety can give you.
Tenants are encouraged to help one another, inspire, and assist. While each case of addiction is unique in its nature and circumstances, being among other sober people can help bring interesting perspectives to the table, and can help people figure out new ways to deal with their addiction.
Life at a sober living community is built around the concept of support in recovery. Peer support is integral not only in maintaining sobriety, but in promoting empathy and a fulfilling cooperative spirit.
You Begin To Have Fun Again
Enjoying yourself is an integral part of life at a sober living community. While drugs flood the brain with pleasure, they take the joy out of living by neutering your ability to feel much of anything else. As your brain combats the changes of drug use, life will begin to feel like living again – and with that comes a host of different emotions, joy included.
Learning what it’s like to enjoy yourself and have fun doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with drugs or the drive to procure them can be a liberating experience. It can also be encouraging. However, it can also be difficult to manage. As with everything else in early recovery, it’s important to approach this with laser focus. The structure of life at a sober living community helps immensely here, as it allows you to exploit that early enjoyment as a way to build new habits and replace the obsessiveness of substance use with the passion and focus of having a new hobby to care about.
Overcoming addiction isn’t a straightforward process, and it doesn’t just “go away” quickly. The process takes years, and there will be plenty of trying times. Sober living is meant to give you a massive leg up on the situation by pushing you into getting used to a new life without the temptation of drugs, so that when you go back into the real world, you’ll have the job and the schedule needed to focus on the things that really matter.
It Teaches You To Be In Control Again
The biggest danger to such a program is excessive stress. Stress is often what triggers a relapse, as old habits resurface when a dire situation develops. Building a resistance to the kind of stress that puts you off your game – massive anger, tremendous grief, a major injury and weeks of downtime – isn’t really possible. Instead, it’s important to build a mechanism for building that stress off. That’s where fun comes in again.
When you begin to have fun in recovery, you’ll have the opportunity to find ways to take care of major stress. One of the biggest challenges with addiction is that it very quickly wires itself to our stress coping mechanism – instead of anything else, we turn to drugs as a way to deal with highly stressful situations because they’re effective at completely distracting us from the problem at hand.
When drugs are no longer an option, problems become very hard to deal with. Reteaching yourself to use other ways to cope with stress and calm down only becomes possible when you start to see the many alternative ways life has of being fun and enjoyable. You begin to turn to art, writing, exercise or music as a way to build off stress. And best of all, all these things are constructive and effective ways to deal with stress, rather than putting you in increasingly stressful situations.