SOBER LIVING HOUSES: POTENTIAL ROLES IN SUBSTANCE ABUSE SERVICES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR RESEARCH | Semantic Scholar (2025)

This introduction to a special edition on Oxford Houses suggests that treatment providers have not paid sufficient attention to the social environments where clients live after residential treatment or while attending outpatient programs.

Outpatient programs should consider establishing SLHs for clients who lack a living environment supportive of sobriety, and the structure and processes of the houses used in Options Recovery Services are described.

Findings suggest that the sober living homes helped residents cope with cue exposure through social rules and processes such as chaperones and evening curfews, as well as the presence of peer support for managing the conflictive thoughts and emotions that result from cue exposure.

This chapter reviews the philosophy, history, and recent changes in several types of nonprofessional recovery programs, along with a depiction of AA's influence on them.

What recovery home operators want to accomplish, how they try to do this, the obstacles they encounter in trying to run their homes, and why they keep at it are explored.

Assessment of the prevalence and functions of fictive kinship in sober living home residents suggested that residents created kinship by exchanging various types of support, and by incorporating other residents into existing family relationships, particularly in homes where there were children.

Sober living houses are suggested to be a good example of services that have been neglected in the addiction literature that might help individuals who need an alcohol-and drug-free living environment to succeed in their recovery.

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A heterogeneous and representative sample of 323 homeless individuals in the metropolitan-Denver area with alcohol or other substance abuse problems received a comprehensive array of substance-abuse treatment services and showed dramatic improvement on average in their levels of alcohol and drug use, housing status, physical and mental health, employment, and quality of life.

It is concluded that concurrent halfway house placement can aid in aftercare retention and completion in male veterans enrolled in the Birmingham VAMC Outpatient Substance Abuse Clinic.

The difficulty of bringing about change in drug and alcohol use without fundamental change in the environments where use takes place is suggested, because qualities of both environments are strongly associated with substance dependency, even after individual indicators are controlled.

The findings indicate that treatment should more often incorporate others from a client's social network, using significant others first to provide general social support and later alcohol-relevant support as well.

Given the absence of differential treatment effects between inpatient and supportive housing settings, the use of supportive housing alternatives appears to provide an opportunity for substantial cost savings for VA patients with substance dependence disorders.

Adding social services to public sector programs substantially improved the outcomes of addiction treatment and showed significantly less substance use, fewer physical and mental health problems and better social function at 6-months than Controls.

In the long-term TSF may be the treatment of choice for alcohol-dependent clients with networks supportive of drinking, irrespective of the therapy they will receive and involvement in AA should be given special consideration.

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