Avoid These Mistakes When Picking a Sober Living Facility

Hi guys. Uh, today we are going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart and something that I think is really, really not understood very well in this country or probably anywhere in the world. And we're going to talk about sober living and sober living is non-regulated in the US at least, which means that there are, if we're looking at a scale of 1 to 100, There are all different levels. And to be honest, I would say the bottom 80, 85% is not, is not very good. It can work, but it is not gonna have the criteria that I think are super important to make it a successful experience. Before we start talking about those criteria though, I really do wanna talk for just a second. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they send their loved ones to sober living. Is they don't, they don't understand that the person needs to emerge financially independent. So we don't go to sober living and then come back home. We don't go to sober living and then we get you an apartment. When I say we emerge financially independent, I mean that the person who's leaving sober living needs to be able to take care of their living expenses, their rent, their money, their car, their insurance, their utilities, all those things. And that means that they have to work the sober living for the duration that the sober living is intended to, and to follow along with the plan that the sober living's gonna set up. So what I mean by that is, let's talk about those criteria first. Good sober living, good quality sober living needs to have staff. And when I say staff, I mean staff that is present On a consistent, regular basis, they do not have to be there 24 hours a day. Although that's not a bad thing, they don't have to be there 24, but they do have to be there enough that there is structure to the day, that there are people to go to, and that there is consistency in sort of accountability with the people that are living there. So they could be from eight in the morning to six at night. It could be some. Some facsimile of that, maybe a little bit on the weekends, in and out, something. But there is staff. They know where people are. They know what people are doing. They know exactly what— lots of sober living that I don't think is the greatest quality says they have staff. But what they really mean is that we have staff who will pop into these number of apartments that we're, that we're owning, and maybe once or twice a week we'll pop in and just see who's there. That's not staff. I mean, there's a program. The next thing, and this is super big, is that there needs to be— they need to have phases. So phase 1 through 4 is the norm. And the purpose of the phases is it's an ever-increasing concentric circle model of freedom responsibility. Phase 1 typically is you don't go anywhere by yourself for the first 30 to 40 days. You may not have your phone. You are absolutely getting Rides to meetings. You're going with the other people to the grocery store. You're going on the fun outings. You're doing all those things, but you're just doing them with other people, or at least with with no less than one other person. Maybe sometimes they call that the buddy system. Phase two is you're eligible to get a job. They will the good ones will help you find a job. They have a huge network of people that work with them, and they will get you to this this job. To and from, just like the before where we get you to everything you're gonna go to. You will have rides to where you need to go. Phase 3 is if you own a car or your parents are willing to get you a car, then you are eligible to have a car. The car can only go to work, church, and meetings. So phase 3 is you get— again, you saw that concentric circle model. Phase 3 is now you have your car and you can go to these. These couple places. Phase four is you have your car and you can pretty much go wherever you want to go. You just have to still participate in the fun activities. You still have to do your chores in the home. You have to be back at a certain time, and obviously all along you're being drug tested or alcohol tested depending upon which your substances. So the phases are really important because if we if we just Throw 'em out there and say, well, sober living, just figure this out and, and go be you. It's just too tempting at the beginning. It's too difficult from the brain perspective for the person to be able to manage themselves. So we need to have those phases. Then about 20 years ago, we figured out that sober living needs to be fun. And that sounds sort of oxymoronic that sober living would be fun. But the good ones really do structure around Outdoor living, camping, mountain biking, scuba diving, sailing, horses. Like there's all kinds of them, but you have to, they have to have a concentrated and concerted commitment to having fun because nobody will stay sober if they don't, they don't figure out that their life is fun. I'll never forget when my son went first and he called me about a week into it and he said, mom, did you know you could bowl sober? And I was like, I did. And he's like, I did not. And so, you know, as teenagers, as they're using, college Whatever their life just gets so much that everything they do is around drugs and alcohol, and so they have to relearn that. And then we also have figured out same time we figured out fun was a component, is we need to have connection. Connection is that all-important long-term pleasure chemical of oxytocin. And so as we go and we do these fun things, and we go to the grocery store, and we cook together, and we go to meetings, and we just. hang, we are building good connection, which means we're pouring in that oxytocin. As we navigate the phases successfully and begin to work and to contribute, and maybe we take over our food money, you know, somewhere in there in phase 2, we get pride. And then our relationships are starting to get better. So our pride and connection are just increasing, increasing, increasing. To me, this is one of the major things that we need to get out of long-term sober living. Is the serotonin and oxytocin? Because you know that I talk about all the time, those things are part of the cure. If if and I use the word loosely, but they are they are fundamentally important for someone to stay sober long term. This so then we get into sort of the fringe traits that I look for, but I think they're very important. And the la the next one is. That there's a transitional plan. What that means is that when you finish phase 4, we don't just dump you out into the streets and never see you again. Phase 4 transitional is we will help you say, like, John is leaving with you, he's graduating the same time you are, and Steve is about 7 months sober out there, and Paul is 2 years, and they're looking for roommates. So you guys are gonna go live with these guys for 6 months or so. Lots of times in transitional Living, they do 6-month leases so they can sort of find their groove and figure out who they really wanna live with, maybe long-term. In transitional living, the only thing that's going to change when you leave sober living is where you put your little head down at night. You still have access to the same groups you've been going to, the same counselor you've been seeing, the same fun sober friends you've made, the same activities you've created, same job, same school, whatever you're doing, nothing's going to change. Addiction loves change. So transitional— this, the transitional step after you complete sober living is really helping screw the lid down on this addiction going into hibernation, because nothing's changing so that the addiction doesn't have as much chance to get back in. Alumni, I think, are hugely important. Having enough alumni tell us that the place has been there long enough and is good enough. And successful enough that people want to stay involved with it after they leave. And I don't think most alumni hang out for 20 years, but for the first year or two, my boys were super involved in the alumni part of where they went. And I really recommend that alumni are great if, if you get caught, you do have a lapse and you get caught, which you will, then, then a lot of them will go have you go live with the alumni for a couple of days, go to a bunch of meetings, rethink yourself, like Do you wanna come at this with a different attitude? Do you wanna come at this differently? So the alumni are helpful in that. Alumni also help get jobs. They know a lot of people and they can give you the jobs like in your phase 2, 3, 4 while you're at the sober living. They're also really, really great for big real boy jobs. One of my kids became an electrical engineer from an alumni that where he went to sober living who was He hired him to help install candle lighting, and after he did the candle lighting for a while, he's like, "Well, I don't really want to install candle lighting for the rest of my life, but I sure am kind of interested in what how the lighting works." And so that sort of led into that, and I hear about that frequently. And also, the the alumni are just really good role models. They've been there; they get it; they've done it; they've they've been successful. And a lot of time, the alumni will band together. Two or three of them will call over on a Sunday afternoon and say, "Hey, who all's there tonight? We're going to bring over steaks and cook steak dinner." So then they also contribute fun. So alumni are really, really important. The next thing that's important is the city. Where is this place? Because it needs to be optimally in a city that's large enough that it's going to have a lot of recovery and it's going to have— so it may have a lot of recovery centers. It may have a lot of people that are in recovery. Like my boys went to sober living in Atlanta. Atlanta, I make this number up, but I swear, It seems like it has like 40,000 people under the age of 40 who are sober. And so that's really important because you need a big—it's like going to a bigger college. Like you need like a bigger pond to fish in so that you can find people to date, people to hang out with, people to do fun with, and to find enough people that are that would have common interests with you. So the size of the city—I also think the size of the city really can correlate also with. Proximity to, to us. Our recommendation is send your loved one to sober living 2, 2.5 hours away from you, no more if possible, so that you can go down on the Sundays when they're able to and have lunch with them. Or you can— they get what's called a TL, therapeutic leave, after a while, and that's usually 4 hours on the weekend one day. So it's close enough that you can go and do that without having to get on a plane. Go spend the weekend for a 4-hour visit at most. So proximity to home and the size of the city, I think, would kind of be lumped into one. Those are the traits. Now I want to talk a little bit about what, what really is very important for the families to understand. And that is what I led with, which is we, we will not financially make your life happen after this. Because otherwise, so, and you have to sometimes say like, if you get, if you get kicked out or if you leave early, you will have to have the money to support yourself because we are not going to come get you, rescue you, or set you up in an apartment. I think that this is part of the biggest problem is that people don't know what they're doing when they're looking at sober living. It's, as I said, unregulated and lots and lots and lots of people have figured out you can make a lot of money. On the field of addiction, and so there anyone can open a sober living. They are not accredited, and all you gotta do is get a website and say you're sober living. And there's a lot, a lot of fly-by-night ones. So you really want to look at their websites. Does it have a feel that it has those first four four staff phase fund community? Does that website impress you that it has that? Then I would also like obviously call them, talk to them. Do you get that feeling? Like I must have talked to 15 sober livings all around the country years ago when we were just starting this. And there were, I didn't like the first 14 at all. Like it's a lot of money upfront. If your kid leaves, too bad, too sad. We were keeping the money. No structure whatsoever. One of 'em was an apartment. And he was gonna live in it. I said, well, what is he gonna do all day? We don't care. He can just, you know, ride the subway around the city. I'm like, no. How often does the staff check in? Oh, at least once a week someone will lay eyes on him. Like, no. Another one was they just have to call in at 11 and let us know that they're at home. So you really wanna do your research on this. Do not be afraid to ask questions. There's no such thing as a dumb question when it comes to finding good quality sober living. For your loved one, so you want to get that vibe. Like when I finally got hold of the guys that I talked to, I was like, these are my people. Like they were very kind; they were very patient. They really outlined how it works. They told me how long they'd been in existence, how it got started. The whole story just made me feel very, very secure and very comfortable that this was a good sober living for my child. So I. Ask these questions, you guys, and if they don't have these things and they try to like sort of circumvent that or talk around why they don't, just find another one. What I like to do is send people to 2 different places. Your kids are probably not going to go to these because they're far away from you. These are in the Southeast. They work for our clients mostly because most of our old clients, when we were only seeing local people, were from here. But Look at purpletreatment.com. It's outside of Atlanta. It's really called Purple, but the website is called Purple Treatment. And look at Greenville Transitions. That's also in the Southeast. Neither one of these may be where you go, but their websites are outstanding and their website is a really good way for you to sort of get your teeth into what I'm looking for. Then you can start to Google sober living 2 and a half hours, 3 hours from you and see if you see any that like are comparable and then pick up the phone and start asking. Even if you, if you're not positive it's comparable, at least call them and ask. You want to know that you are making the best, best choice you can. Some sober livings take insurance and frankly more and more are starting to because they have what's called, they've built into it at the first maybe 2 to 3 weeks will be what's called partial hospitalization. PHP, your insurance will cover that. After that fades away, then they have what now they're called— what's IOP, intensive outpatient program? And so they'll build that in. And it's usually just for the guys in the house. It's usually in the morning. Some of them may run one that's community-based as well in the evening, but that is also going to be partially covered by insurance, if not fully. That will leave you for that maybe first 16, 18 weeks, depends on how they've structured it, at least with some insurance coverage. And you would be left with what's called the cottage or the residential aspect of that, which would be the house. So check into that. Definitely make sure that your insurance will cover that. But that's a, that's a new thing that's coming up. I've seen it more and more and more is that sober livings, the good ones, are taking insurance to that effect. Um, I think that those are the basic criteria that people don't understand. They don't, don't even know they should have. Do not be so desperate to get your loved one into sober living that you just pull it and you make a hasty decision or a cheap one, or because they're, you know, they're— what they're saying to you sounds good, but there's really no legs behind it. I check references. I would ask I did ask, can I talk to some families who have gone, have sent their children here? And I called 3 or 4 parents, talked to 2 dads and a mom, and they said good things. And so I felt much better about it. So look at all that. But I think sober living is misunderstood, misrepresented. And I think a lot of people don't think it's necessary. I don't think standalone treatment for 30 days. 45 days is enough. That is just beginning to give the brain recovery. They need that 6 months, in my opinion, to really solidify some of that brain recovery. At 6 months, we've got a good bit of recovery in the brain as far as neuroreceptors going to sleep. At 30 days, we have very little, if any. And so the longer your person stays, which is another reason to go to that transitional, make sure that's included. is that can give you another year and a half, 2 years where now we really are nailing it down. So that's what my kids stayed in Atlanta. They, they never came out because they're, it's just where they built their peer groups and their jobs and their school and all those things. I'm reading a question, which is why I got kind of weird there because this is a good question. So Lori's saying, great guidelines, having difficulty with the idea of them being 100% financially independent near the end of the stay. For some, this is possible, but it could be difficult in a city with high cost of living. True, but remember, we are looking for humility and willingness. Humility and willingness are going to be there. They're the bottom of the pyramid for recovery. And so yeah, they're not going to go out and live in a two-bedroom apartment in a really lovely high-rise. They're going to live probably with three or four other guys in an apartment or in a house. It's not. It's going to be more like. Collegiate living as far as quality. And so, but every, every family I've talked to in all these years I've been doing this, all the families that go ahead and help chip in and pay for living always regret it. So you really need to think about that because as we build, the money thing is if you build a, if you build a home for addiction, it will bring its suitcases, it will unpack and it will live there. Pretty darn quickly, so you really need them to be humble and willing to have that pride from being independent. Again, that serotonin is is just pivotal, and these are you know we're talking about seventeen years old and up, so they really need to be independent. So think think that through. I get it that it's tough, but it's doable. I mean, it's doable. I see it all the time, and but every family that doesn't do it. Tells me later that they're sorry they did. Also, never ever ever make a deal with your loved one to go to sober living. If you go, we'll buy you a car. If you go, we'll give you cash. Don't do that because you're really inviting box checking recovery into play there. And what I mean by box checking recovery is I'll comply, I'll do it, but I'm not gonna really do it. I'm not gonna really change. And as soon as I get out, I'm gonna get my car and And I'm going right back to drug land. So you really need to give the the best the best way to make success is to say we love you dearly. This is what we're offering. You we will pay for six eight whatever months. Like some of them are structured so that you can pay upfront for four months, and then the rest is free, and they can stay for a year. Like they're just sort of know that, but. Our plan is for you to stay for the duration and work when they ask you to work and save your money. And when you emerge, you'll, you'll be taking care of yourself. Now, this doesn't mean, you guys, that we're not going to love them. It doesn't mean you can't take them to lunch, you can't give them an Easter basket, you can't buy them some new clothes, you can't buy them a grill. Like, you can, you can support your, your loved one. You just don't want to be responsible For their living money, because then what money they make can go to drugs. It's really, it's very, very, very base, but I would really recommend that. So it's tough. This is sending your loved one to sober living is not for the faint-hearted, you guys. I totally get it. It feels completely non-intuitive. It is, it's, it's beyond difficult. It's very, very, very tough. But a good one, it will be not very tough for you, and you will you will reap the benefits, and your child will will instantly connect and bond. I remember after a while he was like, "Are you guys coming down on Sunday?" We're like, "Yeah, we were planning to." You don't need to come. A bunch of us were really wanting to go golfing. I'm like, "Okay, we won't." I mean, and that's I ran ran it by the staff, and I was like, "Is that okay?" And he's like, "Yes, that means he's bonding with these guys. That means they're building that connection, which means that oxytocin he's having fun." He's really, really buying into this and enjoying it and working hard. So bear that in mind as well. All right, so I've talked for a while. I don't know what time it is. Wow, I talked for longer than I normally do. So Bree, you want to slap some of those questions up? I answered one. All right, this is from Aisha. How do you deal with an addict who constantly accuses you for the stuff he himself is doing, like cheating? And what if they are holding a job and it's Steady income. How do you deal with them? Okay, so let's answer the first part. How do you deal with an addict constantly accusing the stuff he is doing? Just bear in mind that all addicts are the victims. All addicts like to pick fights, get little arguments going. I would just—I wouldn't even debate it. I wouldn't—I would just say, "Well, I'm sorry you feel like that. I'm not doing that," or "You might be right." I would just find some glib things, like if they say, "You're the one that." I'm only using because you argue with me. You might be right. I'll try not to do that anymore. Don't engage. Recognize what that's doing. I feel like that's a deflection. If he's accusing you of what he's doing, I wouldn't, I wouldn't get into debating it. So I don't understand the question of what if they're holding a job and it's steady income. So do you want to flush that out a little bit, Aisha, for me? Um, because I don't really understand what the question is on that. If so, we'll pop it back up when you do it. So let's leave that one for Aisha to come back to. This is from Lisa. My son is currently in a sober living connected with the rehab he went to. He can stay there 3 months and also doing 3 months of outpatient. Thumbs up. Then he needs to find another sober living. It's also state funded and he's thriving. It's a 10-minute walk from me. We're in California. Well, that's darn lucky for you because that's, that's pretty good. Like, The state-funded ones can cannot meet all those criteria, but it sounds like he's really doing well there. And again, like I said at the very beginning, you can. I have seen people do well in Oxford houses and some of the lower-end ones. It just depends on how unmanageable their life was before and how dedicated they are to getting substance free and never going back. You know, I say all the time, you can go to Harvard out of. a bad public school just as easily as if you go out of a very expensive private school. It's how much do you want it? How much do you pour into it? And how much do you chase it? So same, same call, same situation. So good. I'm glad that— My son is finally going into rehab, then sober living. He's been homeless for 2 years. He has done this research and it was all his decision. His problem has always been getting caught with other people in the house. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest, like people do Do relapse in sober living. It's it's a thing, but the good ones don't tolerate it. The good ones don't tolerate if you know someone is using and you don't tell, you're just as guilty. So, and then again, that sort of goes back if if the good ones don't tolerate it, but they have the sort of alumni thing over there and say, okay, you can go over there and stay with John for a couple days and come back and have a conversation with us. And if you can come at this differently, you can come back in. Um, Aisha said it too, and then Mary has just said it. It is really great if your child can go to rehab, like for the first 30 days or whatever that duration is gonna be in that level 4, and then seamlessly move into sober living there. That's ideal because then you don't have to get into the argument. Like there's no, there's no downtime, there's no in-between time. And mostly they just go from one, from A to B. And the staff usually gets them from A to B. So you don't get involved in this whole transitional argument of, I don't really wanna go. Why are you doing this? You don't love me. You're, you know, the whole emotional blackmail thing. So if you can find that, I like that a lot. It's also less change. So I really like that. Sometimes people go to the 30 days and then to sober living. Some sober livings require that, some do not. Some just, you just can go. And as long as you're not gonna go into detox and become ill or get sick, then they're fine. So again, they're all different, but I really like that when it's seamless like that, that's pretty good. Also, lots of the good ones will also help you if your child needs to go to detox, but not really the 30 days. They will recommend a detox facility near them, and then they will be the ones that go get your kid out of the detox and bring them back straight to sober living. And I like that a lot too. All right, Donna, is there hope for an addicted person with Wernicke's alcohol dementia? My daughter's facing a plea deal for a 3rd DUI, rehab or jail. How do rehab centers deal with this? Yes, there's, there is hope. You just, you're, the volume of places to send her will decrease because a lot of them won't have the medical staff or the time allocated for that, but That's where I would just be getting on the phone, doing some research, so that she can find somewhere that can deal with that. I would I would say there are some. I don't know of any, but I'm sure there are some, and I don't know how they deal with it because I've never actually had someone go, and I've never seen it. So I do also think we are seeing a large, a pretty good increase in psychotic thinking, in sort of psychotic breaks, delusional thoughts, paranoia from substances, whether. It's weed or stimulants or a combination thereof. So there are we're seeing more and more places that will have a maybe a thirty and up day hospitalization part of that to see if we can get the person stabilized before we put them in actual sober living. We once had a kid years ago who spent 109 days in a hospital so that he could come out of his psychotic thinking before he came to sober living. And even at the very beginning of the sober living, he had a little bit of delusional thought, but he could. Recognize that that was delusion, and so they were able to keep him on medication and work with the psychiatrist they work with so that they could just wean that medicine down, down, down, down, and he eventually was completely fine and actually went to sober college. So you're just gonna have to do a bunch of research. You may have to be your own advocate on that pretty hard. You also might have to call your insurance company and just sort of ask them. What would be in network or out of network that they could recommend for that? Because that's going to be more of a medical thing, so it would be worth maybe trying that. All right, Carla, my son is currently in a detox place. I think I haven't been able to talk to him in over a month. Is it common for these places to turn off their phones and never call their parents with updates? He's 20. No. So detox is normally five to ten days. Just depends on the substance and how much. He was using. So a month of detox—it doesn't sound like that's detox. It could have been maybe detox, and he slid into the residential. It's not common. I mean, he may not have his phone, but there'd be a house phone. There'd be a hall phone. There'd be something for them to call out. Have you tried to call in at twenty? You know, that darn hippie gets in the way because he's an adult. But you should be able to call in and ask how he's doing, if— unless he just didn't put you on the, the list of people that they give information to. And if that's the case, then he's just limiting your access to himself for whatever reason. I don't know, that's a weird— I don't hear that very often, so not sure what's going on with that, but that is not common. Oh, that's it. All right. All right, Alicia, did you want to chime back in and give me more details about that question or no? Okay. All right, guys. Well, I hope this was helpful and right on time. Perfect. All right. Thanks a lot. And we'll see you next time. Bye, guys.