In about 30 of the 50 states, there are state organizations who set standards for sober houses. There's a difference between sober housing and sober living houses. Here's how to choose one.
Hi, guys. Chris from Cadre. Again, continuing in this theme about sober living homes, recovery residences, how to choose one. We talked last video about what the differences are. In this video, I want to get a little bit more detail about how you can pick one. So, in about 30 of the 50 states, there are state organizations who set standards for sober houses. In the national organization is called NAR, National alliance of Recovery Residences. If you go and seek out that website, you can look at different states.
You can find accredited, certified sober living homes in many states. We don't have every state covered yet. I'm on this board. I'm helping them do this. We've been doing this for several years. But simply, I would put it this way. If you're a loved one or you have been referred to Sober living house, and you have the ability to go visit the house or go meet the people, that's the first thing I would say. If you can at all go check it out. Maybe this is a move from a different state, and your best you're going to get is the website.
Well, if they have a good website and they kind of show the house, I would say look for a vibe or a sort of essence of, is there unity and community in that house? Are they doing things together, or did they just show you a picture of a really nice bedroom? Because to me, there's a difference between sober housing and sober living houses, where the focus is on the sober lifestyle versus just a housing model. Right. I'm gonna be able to live here, and there's no beer in the fridge, and there's a few rules, and people are gonna leave me alone, and I can go do my thing.
That is a very low level setup. That's a. That's a low level of accountability, and I would watch out for that. However, there are people who are ready for that. So I don't want to disparage anybody's type of sober living home. I think it's really important to ask certain questions of the operators of the house, like, is there a house meeting? What are the rules about curfew? What are the rules about visits? What are the rules about being gone? Can you spend x number of nights out of the sober house in a given week or so?
And often you'll see that the rules are published on their website, or they have a quick, organized approach to everything, and they're like, yes, we have this, we have this, we have this. And there seems to be some thought put into the structure. The more highly structured the house is, the more it will probably cost, because the structure comes from people, the structure comes from staff. So some sober houses just have a live in manager who's maybe 15 months sober, and they check to make sure people are home.
They check to make sure there's no funny business going on in the house. Maybe they do your analysis once in a while, all the way up to you're getting tested every week you're getting checked out, they're opening doors in rooms. And lots of oversight, depending on the referral for your loved one or for you, based on what your counselor who's sending you there. Maybe it's not always from primary treatment directly to a sober house. So that personal assessment for yourself, you have to be honest with yourself about how much oversight do I really need?
And put yourself in the best situation that you can get. I don't. I think addicts tend to put themselves in situations where they can have the most freedom because we're just wired that way. We want to run our own show, and that can be dangerous, especially in today's fentanyl world. So start with the website. Start with maybe the treatment center that has referred to them regularly or some other entity that has referred to them regularly. Ask them what they think of these houses. Talk to somebody there if you can.
If you can't get a hold of anybody at this over house to ask questions, move on to the next one, because they should be responding to your questions if they're trying to accept you or your loved one into the house. We could go on and on about all the different details, but from my perspective, what I would advise is look for what amounts to a sober lifestyle mission in the house. We're here to help people repurpose their lifestyle as opposed to just provide a bed in a dresser and a lamp, because that's a very thin housing model.
And years and years ago, I really sort of started to talk about my sober houses as sober living homes, not sober houses, not a housing model. I really think that's an important distinction. And there are many ways to find out the differences in different states. There's different organizations. Like I said, 30 out of the 50 states at this point have a NAR affiliate, national alliance of Recovery Residences. org. You can pick your state. Find out the state affiliate's name, which in Minnesota is Mash, and in Denver it's Carr, Carr.
And Washington it's walker, w a Q A R R, something like that. Washington area quality recovery residences. They might use the term recovery residences, but the sip, they're all sober houses also, so it kind of gets confusing. But there's an awful lot of help because it's very helpful, because those houses have been certified or they're not in that organization, someone has gone to check on them and held them to a certain set of standards. So reach out, do your research, do your due diligence, ask questions, and as always, look to Cadre for advice.
We got a lot of people here that have a lot of experience and can help.
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