Sober Living House (Standards, Levels, and Rules)

There's actually a huge variance in sober living options. So before you or a loved one makes a choice about what's right for you, make sure you watch this whole video. I'm going to explain to you the 4 levels of sober living homes so you don't waste a lot of time and money on all the wrong things. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, Master Addiction Counselor, and this is Put the Shovel Down, the channel designed to give you all the information and Resources that you need to beat addiction for good, and I'll make sure you're always 5 steps ahead of addiction. Okay, back to sober living houses. There are actually 4 different levels of sober living houses, and those levels depend on how much structure and support is involved in the program. In this video, I'll go over each level with you. We'll talk about what all's involved in them, what the pros and cons are, and you'll actually get to hear from 3 young men who have spent some time in sober living facilities. I like to call them expert witnesses. They're going to give it to you straight. And if you watch all the way to the end, I'm going to let you hear them talk about what happens when you break the rules at sober living. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I really love sober living because I think it's the perfect balance between structure and support that you really need to sort of get on your feet in recovery, but also allowing you to live life While you do it, because recovery or staying sober away in a locked-up facility is a totally different thing than staying sober in real life. And so to me, that's where recovery really begins. Let's start our discussion by talking about what I mean when I say some sketchy things have went down in sober living facilities. I guess you could say the problem really comes where the crossroads of supply, demand, and a lack of regulation meet. Did you know there's Currently little to no regulation on sober living facilities. I mean, anybody can pretty much open up a place, put some people in it, charge them some money, and call it sober living. So you've really got to be careful and make sure you know what you're getting into here. Over the past few years, there have been a rash of these super shady places that have opened up. So you might be thinking, well, what do you mean by shady? Let me give you some examples. Like some of these places actually go to, they send people into airports when they know someone's coming into a treatment And they sort of grab that person off and say, hey, no, come here instead, it's a better deal. So they're sort of like poaching patients off. One of the big things that's happened is they run all these lab tests and run up a bunch of insurance. They collect a bunch of insurance from running the lab, the drug and alcohol, like urine drug screens and lab tests and that sort of thing. So there's a lot of insurance fraud going on on that end of things. I mean, people would actually go into bars and pick up people in bars and get them to go into these sober living halfway houses. I mean, these places were pretty sketch. There was like barely any supervision involved, if any at all. Some of them mixed men and women in the same house. You could imagine that that's a big old giant mess. And as you might think, if you put a bunch of people with substance abuse problems in a house together and there's not any structure, support, or accountability, things can get messy and even dangerous. This actually happened to Chaz once in Florida. Let's hear what he has to say about it.

This one guy who I'd been in rehab with 2 months earlier was like, oh yeah, like, I'm the manager of this new halfway house, so like you can come here.

Okay, hold on, wait a minute. Time. Say that again. The guy that you were in rehab with 2 months ago?

Yeah.

Says, I'm the manager of this new halfway house?

Yeah. And I was like, wow, that sounds awesome. Like, I really liked this kid, so like I was like, Yeah, let's do it.

Just want to make sure I had that covered.

And he was like, yeah, the guy that like owns it, he'll give you like a couple weeks to pay like your first like thing of rent. And then like I got there and like he opened the door and like I could just tell like he was messed up. And I was like, bro, like what are you on right now? And he's like, I'm on Xanax. And I was like, I thought you said this is like a halfway house. And he's like, yeah, as long as we pay the guy on time. He doesn't care what we do as long as like we get him his money. And so it was him and 3 other guys. The 3 other guys were all on heroin. One of the guys I actually worked with at Outback came over to hang out with one of the other guys, and like they were all doing heroin. And like 2 of the guys were like shooting up. The dude that was sniffing it ended up overdosing and like falling out right there. And so like me and this other guy had to like give him CPR and like wait for like the paramedics to come. Like, they came and like took him out, and like I was just like so freaked out because like I'd never seen that before. Like, literally thought this guy was like about to die.

It was traumatic.

When he was on like the stretcher and everything, like his legs were going like he was on a bicycle, and like his face, like he wasn't there. And like that was like after like they had Narcan'd him, and he was just like so out of it. Like, we were like, we don't know if he's gonna be okay. And he showed up back at the house an hour later because he had left.

Yeah, don't get that mixed up. Like, you'll be able to tell real quick if you're getting into a place like that.

Sketchy.

Okay, great. How can you tell? Because there are some sketchy—

No, there are.

Soul living. That's why it's so hard for families because there's some sketchy out there. So how do you know?

A lot by how they talk. A lot by, you know, you can see if there's like passion in them, if they really believe in what they're doing. And honestly, if you go there and there's people visibly messed up, that's a pretty good sign. Yeah, that's a, that's a really good sign. And also just about how they go about the whole admission process and about how they talk to you on the phone.

Okay, so now that we talked about the sketchy stuff, let's get back to the levels. So level number 4 is like the highest structured. So the higher the number, the more structure, support, accountability, rules that's involved with that program. Level 4 is actually what you would consider residential treatment program. These are actual treatment programs that house people in them. And so level number 3 sober living facilities usually have 24/7 staff, like on site. There's usually a ton of structure, a ton of accountability, lots of drug screenings, a lot of meeting requirements and group requirements. And generally level 3 involves some kind of clinical services like licensed counselors and doctors and that sort of thing. So this is really the next best thing. It is right under what I would call residential treatment. So right under that would be like level 3 sober living programs. And usually they have the residents work some kind of like level system. So when you first go in, you have a lot more rules and structure, and then they sort of let the rope out a little bit at a time and a little bit at a time, which I personally think is the best plan. These all or nothing plans when it comes to addiction recovery don't work. You've got to give a little bit and a little bit and a little bit and let people get used to it a little at a time before you give them more freedom and more responsibility. Now, if we're talking about someone who's a little ambivalent about recovery, and basically that means they're not 100% sure, like they sort of want it, sort of don't, then level 3 is definitely the level of sober living house that I would personally recommend. I've seen a lot of people make the mistake of putting their, their young adult child into a sober living program that didn't have enough structure and support, and things tend to go sideways when that happens. So let's hear from our expert witnesses on that very topic. Did you see any sketchy stuff go down at the Level 2?

Oh yeah.

What kind of sketchy stuff?

I mean, um, like I went to the same halfway house as Caleb and, but it was in kind of a sketchier apartment complex when I was there. And, um, I mean, there were like people walking up to our guys and like offering to sell them weed and stuff in the apartment complex.

Not like other residents, but not like other residents of the recovery house, but other people that just lived at the apartment?

No, but I mean, On the whole, like, the residents were the worst people there. I mean, it's not like the drug dealers were the bad ones. I mean, I had 2 roommates OD. Had like 3 that found, like, just found bags of dope in their bags from home. And those are the ones that like told on ourselves, which, you know, good for them. But, um, Yeah, I mean, it seems like no matter where they're at, we're— we were usually the worst ones there for sure.

Were you doing anything sketchy while you were there?

Yeah. What did you do sketchy? Um, well, I went out a few nights. Uh, Casey, or, uh, he was working there at the time, and he came in one night and was like, uh, hey dude, like, where you been? And I was like, oh, I've just been like out. He was like, all right, whatever. But then like, I eventually like It came out and like I like told the counselors there about it and stuff like that.

So what happened to you when it came out that you broke the rules?

Um, kind of was just like a slap on the wrist. It wasn't anything like they didn't like kick me out for that or anything.

Did you use your drink while you were out?

Uh, yeah, I did. Uh, and they kind of gave me like once or twice.

So they knew, they, you confessed that part too, or they didn't know that?

Yeah, yeah, no, I did. But once I started to involve other people there, then they— I had to go after that.

Now, sober living facilities can be costly, but that's because of all the clinical services, the on-site 24/7 staff. All of that takes a lot of money to provide. So when you're looking at sober living houses, a lot of people don't understand why the cost range is so much. I've seen sober living range— I think the bottom rung is about $100 a week. That's about the bottom level of cost that I've seen, all the way up to $10,000 or so a month. So it's a big range of money. And so you might be thinking, good gosh, what could possibly be the difference to cause that big of a range of the cost? And that's involved with the clinical services, the 24/7 staff. If you're going to provide all that— some of them provide food, some of them provide transportation. I personally feel like the transportation issue is a Huge important factor because a lot of the lower-level sober living facilities don't provide transportation, which means that the people that live in them have to find rides to get to meetings, to get to their job and stuff like that. And as you might can imagine, sometimes things fall through the cracks when that happens. So I think early on in the early days of sober living, I think it's really good if there's some transportation provided because it's just one more failsafe to kind of keep people on track in those early days. So for example, Hope for Families actually partners with a local sober living facility right here in Greenville, South Carolina called Greenville Transitions. Now it's not part of our business, they're a totally separate thing, but Hope for Families does all of their counseling. So all the young men that live there actually get intensive outpatient treatment for the whole time that they're there. That means they get 6 hours of group every week, they get an individual session with their private addiction specialist every week, and their family gets a family session every week from our family specialists. Now, some of these guys come from out of town, so some of the family sessions are actually over the phone. But essentially, these guys and their families are getting a lot of clinical services, and all of that is covered by their sober living program. So you've really got sober living and intensive outpatient services put together, and that actually creates a pretty good program. Sometimes it's even enough that people don't have to go away to long residential treatment programs like 30, 60, or 90 days. Now, some people step out of those longer programs into this level of sober living. And sometimes in certain situations, people can start right there at that level without having to go to 30, 60, or 90 days. So when you think about all that and you look at sort of the cost of one of these level 3 programs, it's actually not a bad deal. You can actually get about 6 months of treatment for what about 30 days in a residential treatment program would cost you. So when you look at it from a cost-benefit analysis, from a program analysis, I really think level 3 is optimal for people coming out of residential treatment programs, or especially for young people or anyone that has some ambivalence about the recovery. It gives them enough structure and support to sort of get stable and steady before moving down to those next levels. So level 2 didn't work for you, and you got stepped up into level 3.

Yeah.

What's level 3 like?

Definitely way more structure. It could be smaller, could be bigger. Like depending on how many people were there or whatever, but pretty much always had someone with me, especially in the earlier stages of being there, like a counselor or someone like that.

Like 24/7 staff.

Yeah, I had to go to meetings every day for the first 90 days. Pretty much just like had to— everyone had certain chores they had to do that had to get done by the week or daily.

That's a good point. You talked about like how many, how many clients are there at one time. Do you think that makes a difference?

For me it did, because just you can get real close with like a smaller group of people than you can with like everybody. In Level 3, there was 4 or 5 other clients that were living with me, and when I was in Level 2, there was like 20 or something. So.

Okay. Is it easier to fly under the radar if there's more?

Yeah.

Yeah.

For me there was, but still got caught.

So. When you were in either house, did any other like client or person there like approach you and like want to go use or anything like that? Did anybody else, were you ever like hooked up with anybody else that you didn't want to approach?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

At level 2, not, not level 3, but yeah, definitely level 2, but I kind of I somewhat started that. I feel like, I'm not trying to say—

You were the bad egg?

I'm not trying to say that, but like when I got in there, it seems like everything went downhill for everyone else a little bit. Not everyone there, but in my apartment kind of ended up like that.

It's kind of my experience. I wonder if it's your experience that when one goes down, usually several go down.

Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate.

When you're in a circle, if one goes, usually more than one goes.

Yeah, usually. Absolutely.

Okay, let's move on to level number 2. Now, these sober living homes don't usually have in-house 24/7 staff, like, on, like, living in the house, but they usually have staff supervision. A lot of times they'll have staff there and available all day, but maybe only staff on call at night. So there is a level of oversight and supervision, but it may not be 24/7. And most level 2 programs offer some level of clinical services. That could be recovery groups, groups and that sort of thing. And a lot of times those groups and services are ran by recovery coaches or peer support specialists. And they may also include some clinical services from licensed counselors and physicians, but it won't be to the level of those level 3 recovery houses. Now, I think level 2 recovery supports are really a good solution for someone that's slightly more motivated. Maybe they've had some treatment before, they kind of know the deal, they're ready to get back on track, and they just need a little help doing it. Level 2 is perfect for that. Let's hear what Casey has to say about his experience with Level 2. All right, Casey, so the other couple of people we talked to said for them, they felt like at least to start with, they needed the Level 3 structure, support, and accountability. Otherwise, when they tried to go to the lower level first, it didn't go down good. But you had a little different experience.

Yeah.

Because you went straight from Active addiction, hardcore, into a level 2 sober living.

Yep.

No detox or anything.

No detox or anything.

Well, I detoxed, but in the halfway house. Yeah.

No, like medical detox.

Nope.

Okay. So I know in group you've talked about how you feel like the level 3, which is the Moore structure, is kind of counterproductive.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like, you know, I've heard in meetings people say before, like, recovery is not for people that need it or for people that want it. It's for people that work it, you know. And it doesn't matter. Like, you can stay clean for 90 days and level 4, you know, whatever, if that's even a thing.

It is.

But as soon as you get— is it really like jail? Is that level 4?

Level 4 is really like residential treatment.

Okay. Well, I mean, you can stay clean for 90 days, but if you don't want it, like, as soon as you get out, you're going to go back and just, you know, just as hard. Like, I feel like if you want it, you can get it wherever. Okay. Um, I don't know if that answered your question.

When you say if you want it, does that mean if you want recovery or if you want to use or both?

Both.

Okay.

I mean, if you want it bad enough, you could get high on a half one and people get high in prison.

When would you recommend level 2 for Uh, what circumstance?

I don't know.

They're going to have to want it, especially if there's that freedom factor there, because there will be opportunities to like go and get high for sure. More opportunities than like in a level 3.

Okay, lastly, moving on to level number 1. Now these sober living programs are generally peer-run, and so that means that the residents of the house sort of as a community generally decide things like Who stays and who goes. Now, there are usually rules and requirements for living there, like there may be a meeting requirement. Obviously, they're going to have some requirements about sobriety and staying clean and sober, and, and there's probably some chores and things like that that they're responsible for. But the difference here is you're not, you're not dealing with a lot of staff that's making sure that's happening. You're dealing with a group of peers to make sure that those things happen. Sometimes that happens Sometimes that can be kind of a mess, and that really is more based on who's actually living in the house at the time and less about the actual facility or program itself. Because if the people living in the house are governing the program, you could imagine that how good the program is depends highly on who's in the house. You know, Zach actually had a really good experience with Level 1 sober living, so let's hear from him about it. You've also lived in some sober livings that had real, like, minimal rules.

It becomes like a small community. And generally everyone's there for the well-being of, like, everybody. It's more of you're just learning how to be in the real world sober. Like, there's no real people watching over your shoulder. There's no— there's accountability, but there's not like there is in, like, those—

Those high-level ones.

Yeah.

In my mind, I would think if there's less structure, there's probably more shenanigans.

Or—

but maybe I'm wrong. So, like, I think it's on an individual basis. Like, some people can go into those low levels and do fine. Like, they just don't do well with a lot of structure. They like to do their thing on their own, but they generally really want to be sober and clean. And then you have the other ones who are maybe just there to please people in their life, so they pick the lower-tiered ones because they know they'll probably get away with more.

A little— now I've created for you a little cheat sheet. It's a list of questions that you're going to want to ask if you're calling sober living facilities and you're trying to figure out what's best for your situation or for your loved one's situation. And also on that checklist, I've given you my short list of recovery residence programs that I personally recommend. Now listen, just click the link in the description below and you can get that free download right now. Okay, as promised, you've stuck around to the end of the video, so now I'm going to let you hear from the guys about their experiences of what happens when you break the rules of sober living. Did you follow the rules?

Yeah, for the most part.

I felt like I was going to say, did y'all see a butt in that?

Yeah, I mean, I followed, I followed all the rules and then like—

All the important ones?

Yeah, I followed all the important ones. You know, I stayed clean, I went to my meetings, and then, you know, I got horny and I had to get laid. So I did that. That was against the rules. You know, that's— and that is a fair rule.

That's what I was going to say, because that's a rule at a lot of places, like no dating.

I'm going to be just completely honest, like that's taken out. Everybody that I was with at the halfway house with, every one of them got took out by a girl.

Okay.

I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that was there when I was there that's still clean.

So if I remember though, it got you pretty close.

Oh yeah, yeah, it got me, it got me in a tight spot, and if I didn't want it, want the recovery as bad as I did, I probably would have ended up getting high for sure.

So you think the no daddy rule is fair?

It's fair. You're not gonna like it, and you're probably not gonna follow that rule, but like, just know if you do something and it comes back to bite you in the ass, like, it was a fair rule the whole time.

Okay, now the next thing you need to watch is is the video I made with David, who is the owner of Greenville Transitions, and he's going to talk to you about how to know the difference between a good sober living and a bad sober living. I'm going to put it right up here, and all you have to do is click on it to watch that next.