AI Edits from Avoid These Mistakes When Picking a Sober Living Facility
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[00:00:00] Hi guys. Today we are going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart and something that I think is really not understood very well in this country or probably anywhere in the world. And we're going to talk about sober living. ~I. ~Sober living is non-regulated in the US at least, which means that there are, if we're looking at a scale of one to 100, there are all different levels, and to be honest, I would say the bottom 80, 85% is not very good.
It can work, but it is not going to 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 want to talk for just a second. ~One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they send their loved ones to sober living, ~I.~
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 [00:01:00] 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 of that the sober living's going to 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, 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's 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 [00:02:00] 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 owning, and maybe once or twice a week we'll pop in and just see who's there. That's not staff. 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 one through four is the norm and the purpose of the phases is a, it's a ever increasing concentric circle model of freedom, responsibility. Phase one 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 no less than one other person. Maybe sometimes they call that the buddy system. Phase two is your're eligible to get a job.
They will, [00:03:00] 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 job to and from. Just like the before where we get you to everything you're going to go to, you will have rides to where you need to go. Phase three 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 threes, you hit again. You saw that concentric circle model ~phase three. Is now you have your car and you can go to 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 just have to be back at a certain time. And obviously all along you're being drug tested or alcohol tested, depending upon which are substances. So the phases are really important because if we just. Throw 'em out there and say sober living, just figure this out and go be you.
It's ~just ~too tempting at the beginning. It's [00:04:00] 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 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 figure out that their life is fun. I'll never forget. And 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 I did not. And 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 the same time we figured out fun was a component.~
'cause we need to have connection. ~Connection. Is that all important? ~[00:05:00] 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, somewhere in there in phase two. We get pride and then our relationships are starting to get better. So our pride and connection are just 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.
'cause, that I talk about all the time, those things are part of the cure. If, and I use the word loosely, but 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 [00:06:00] plan. What that means is that when you finish phase four, we don't just dump you out into the streets and never see you again. Phase four 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 seven months sober out there, and Paul is two years and they're looking for roommates.
So you guys are going to go live with these guys first six months or so. Lots of times in transitional living. They do six month leases so they can find their groove and figure out who they really want to live with, maybe long term. ~In transitional living. ~The only thing that's going to change ~when you need, ~when you leave sober living is where you put like 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 ~some ~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 [00:07:00] complete sober living is really helping screw the lid down on this addiction going into hibernation 'cause 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 you get caught you do have a lapse and you get caught. But you will then a lot of 'em will go, if you go live with the alumni for a couple days, go to a bunch of meetings, rethink yourself like. Do you want to come at this with a different attitude? ~Do you want to 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 [00:08:00] also 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, it was like I don't really want to install canned lighting for the rest of my life, but I sure am interested in what, how the lighting works. ~And so that sort of led him to that. And I hear about that frequently.~
And also the alumni are just really good role models. They've been there, they get it, they've done it they've been successful. And a lot of time the alumni will get band together. Two or three of 'em 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 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 [00:09:00] number up, but I swear it seems like it has 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 of fishing 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 interest with you.
So ~the si 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. To two and a half 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 four 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 four hour visit at most. So proximity to home and the size of the city I think would be lumped into one. ~Those are the traits. ~Now I want to talk a [00:10:00] little bit about what really is very important for the families to understand, and that is what I led with, which is we will not.
Financially make your life happen after this 'cause otherwise and you have to sometimes say if you get kicked out or if you leave early, you'll 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 of people have figured out you can make a lot of money on the field of addiction and so they're, anyone can open a sober living, they are not accredited, and all you got to do is get a website and say you're sober living and there's a lot of fly by night one.
So you literally want to look at their websites. Does it have a feel that it has those first four four staff [00:11:00] 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 going to live in it. I said what is he going to do all day?
We don't care. He can just, 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 want to 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 [00:12:00] vibe. Like when I finally got hold of the guys that I talked to, I was like, I. 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 secure and very comfortable that this was a good sober living for my child. So ~I. ~I ask these questions, you guys, and if they don't have these things and they try to like, circumvent that or talk around why they don't just find another one.
What I like to do is send people to two different places that 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 [email protected]. 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, [00:13:00] but their websites are outstanding and their website is a really good way for you to get your teeth into what I'm looking for.
Then you can start to Google Sober Living two and a half hours, three hours from you and see if you see any that are comparable, and then pick up the phone and start asking even if you're not positive, it's comparable. At least call them and ask. You want to know that you are making the 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 two to three 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 call 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 the one and it's community based as well in the evening, but that is also going to be partially covered by insurance, if not fully. [00:14:00] 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. Have definitely make sure that your insurance will cover that. But that's a new thing that's coming up. I've seen it more and more is that sober livings, the good ones are taking insurance to that effect.
I think that those are the basic criteria that people don't understand. They 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, 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 talked, called three or four parents, talked to two dads and a [00:15:00] 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.
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 six months, in my opinion, to really solidify some of that brain recovery. It's six 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, two years. Where now we really are nailing it down. So that's what, and my kids stayed in Atlanta. They never came out because of, 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 weird there because this is a good question. So ~Lori is [00:16:00] saying great guidelines, having difficulty with the idea of them being a hundred percent financially independent near the end of the stay. For some this is possible, but it could be difficult in a C city with high cost of living.
True. But remember, we are looking for humility and willingness. Humility and willingness are going to be ~their, they're ~the. Bottom of the pyramid for recovery. And 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 but 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 you're saying 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.
[00:17:00] So you really need them to be humble and willing to have that pride from being independent. ~That, again, ~that serotonin is just pivotal. And these are, we're talking about 17 ~year ~years old and up, they really need to be independent. So think that through. I get it that it's tough, but it's doable.
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 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 going to really do it. I'm not going to really change. And as soon as I get out, I'm going to get my car and I'm go right back to drug land. ~Y ~you really need to give the best. The best way to make [00:18:00] 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 room 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 just 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 be taking care of yourself.
Now, this doesn't mean you guys we're not going to love them. It doesn't mean you can't take 'em to lunch. You can't give them an Easter basket. You can't buy them some new clothes. ~You can't buy 'em a grill. Like ~you can support 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 base. But I would really recommend that. So it's tough. This is sending your loved ones to sober living is not for the faint hearted, you guys. I totally get it. It feels completely non-intuitive. It [00:19:00] is. It's beyond difficult. It's very tough.
But a good one. It will be not very tough for you and you will reap the benefits and your child 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. And that's, I ran it by the staff and I was like, is that okay? And he is 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 buying into this and enjoying it and working hard.
Bear that in mind as well. All right, so I've talked for a while. ~I don't know what time I do. Wow. I talked for longer than I normally do. So ~this is Isha. How do you deal with an addict? Constantly accuses you for this stuff. He himself is doing like cheating. And what if they're holding a job and it's steady income? How do you deal with them? So let's answer the first part. How do you deal with an addict constantly accused of the stuff he is doing?
Just bear in mind that all addicts are the victims. All addicts [00:20:00] like to pick fights, get little arguments going. I would just, I wouldn't even debate it. I wouldn't, I would just say I'm sorry. I feel like that I'm not doing that. Or You might be right. I would just find some glib things. ~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 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? 'Cause I don't really understand what the question is on that. If so, Brie will 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 the sober living, connected with the rehab he went to.
He can stay there three months and also doing three months of outpatient. ~I. ~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. That's darn lucky for you. 'cause that's pretty good. Like the state funded ones 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 [00:21:00] houses and some of the lower end ones ~I. ~It just depends on how unmanageable their life was before and how dedicated they are to getting substance free and never going back. 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 call, same situation. ~So good. I'm glad that. Mary, my son, is finally going into rehab, then sober living. He's been homeless for two years. He has done this research and resolved his decision. His problem has always been getting caught with other people in the house.
Yeah, let's be honest, like people do relapse in sober living. It's a thing, but ~the good ones don't tolerate it. ~The good ones don't tolerate it. If you know someone's using and you don't tell, you're just as guilty, then again, that sort of goes back 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.
[00:22:00] 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 going to be in that level four. ~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 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 want to go. Why are you doing this? You don't love me. You're, 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 going to go into detox and become ill or get sick, then they're fine. So again, they're all different, but [00:23:00] I really like that when it's seamless like 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, Tarana, is there hope for an addicted person with Wernicke's alcohol dementia? My daughter's facing a plea deal for third 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 sender will, will decrease because a lot of 'em 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 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. 'cause I've never rec actually had someone go and I've never seen it.~
So I do also think~ I. ~We are seeing ~a large, a, ~a pretty good [00:24:00] increase in psychotic thinking ~in 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 30 and up day hospitalization ~part of that ~to see if we can get the person stabilized before we put them in actual sober living.
He once had a kid years ago who had 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 was delusion. And so they were able to keep him on medication and work with a psychiatrist they work with so that they could just.
We that medicine down down. And he eventually was completely fine and actually went to sober college. ~I, ~you're just going to 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 ask them what would be a network or out of network that they could recommend for that, because that's going to [00:25:00] 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 10 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. 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 20? You know that darn HIPA gets in the way 'cause he is 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 list of people that they can give information to. And if that's the case, then [00:26:00] 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 gimme more details about that question or No? Okay. ~All right, guys. I hope this was helpful thanks a lot and we'll see you next time. Bye guys.
