Short excerpt from a YouTube video (speaker Amber Hollingsworth) arguing against using ‘home contracts’ when housing someone in recovery. Amber explains that written or verbal contracts tend to backfire because hosts get held to the contract while the person in recovery may evade accountability (e.g., pass drug tests) and then use the contract to avoid deeper accountability.
Chapters
We have a thing in our office about no home contracts. A lot of times these situations, what people do is they say, all right, you can come stay here, but these are the rules. You have to go to a meeting every day. You have to do this, you have to do that. And they set up these home contracts, and I strongly advise against doing that, even though you could probably find a hundred other, like, addiction people to tell you to do that. But the reason I'm going to advise you against doing that is because that will always backfire on you. Think about, okay, I signed a piece of paper or I verbally agreed to do something is not going to stop them or keep them in alignment. But let me tell you what they will do. They will hold your butt to the contract. So what happens is it backfires on you because maybe you know that they're using, but they're passing their drug test. And that was the agreement you made with them or whatever. They're like, I'm passing my drug test. That's what you said. What you're gonna go back and what you said, they'll hold it against you. They'll hold you to the line, but the contract won't hold them to line.