The Best Benefits of Sober Living
Did you know that in the US alone, 50% of all people over 12 have used illicit drugs at least once in their lifetime, and approximately 138 million people over 12 have tried alcohol?
Addiction or substance use disorder affects the lives of people all around the world. It also significantly impacts families, careers, and a person's overall health and well-being.
It can be overwhelming if you or a loved one are struggling with substance use disorder and looking at recovery options. However, learning more about sober living and its benefits can help you to see things from a different perspective.
In this living sober guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about sober living and the benefits it can bring to your life!
What Is a Sober Living Home?
Before diving into the benefits of sober living, it's essential to understand more about sober living homes since they play a critical part in recovery and sober living.
While getting sober may involve a detox program or intensive treatment, living sober is a lifelong journey. A sober living home provides transitional housing that allows people to take the time to learn how to live sober. Doing this involves addressing different issues, such as mental health problems.
Sober homes are drug and alcohol-free environments that allow people to maintain or establish sobriety. Sober living homes are for anybody seeking permanent recovery from addiction.
Many people initially go through a residential treatment program to begin the recovery process. This is because you might need to detox and undergo a more intense treatment program before transitioning to the next step. In other cases, you can go straight into a recovery residence.
Sober living homes allow you to achieve permanent recovery and live sober for the rest of your life. Sober homes offer programming that addresses recovery holistically. Holistic recovery means a transformation of your mind, body, and soul.
Sober living homes typically follow the 12 steps recovery process. You may recognize the twelve steps in programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, but they're also used in many other recovery programs.
Sober living homes provide essential support like:
- Recovery support services
- Substance abuse counseling
- Group therapy
- Medication-assisted treatment (MAT)
- Nutrition and wellness
- Spiritual studies
- Relapse prevention
- Life skills training
- Career counseling
You'll get room and board, meals, and 24/7 access to full-time staff. You'll also get to attend daily 12-step meetings.
Benefits of Sober Living
There are many benefits of sober living that may be difficult to see when you're in the early stages of recovery. These benefits include:
Rediscovering Your Personality
One of the most significant benefits of sober living is rediscovering your personality. When you drink alcohol or use drugs for an extended period, it can cloud who you are as a person.
This is because alcohol and drugs depress your true personality traits. Drug and alcohol use also changes your brain over time. This is because addictive drugs cause changes to the neurons and synapses in your brain, affecting your dopamine levels. Dopamine is like the feel-good chemical in your brain. These changes in your brain lead to altered mood and changes to your personality.
However, once you're sober for a while, you'll feel much better and more like yourself. Your mood won't be as depressed, and you won't be preoccupied trying to find drugs or alcohol to reduce the cravings you're experiencing.
Your brain can also start to recover after approximately 14 months of not using drugs or alcohol.
Since you'll get individual and group therapy at a sober living home, you'll be able to improve your thought process and work out your emotions with guidance and support.
Forming Better Relationships
Another significant benefit of sober living is its positive effect on your relationships.
When addiction enters into the equation, it makes relationships difficult to maintain. When deep into addiction, you don't tend to communicate well with friends and family members.
You'll have strong feelings of guilt, shame, and a fear of judgment. It's also easy to feel that other people may not accept or understand your situation. As a result, you'll behave differently and not be as open about where you've been or who you've been with.
Trust issues also come up. With addiction, there is deception due to the need to hide what's happening in your life.
Other behavioral issues and relationship problems can also occur with drug and alcohol use:
- Anger
- Abuse
- Codependency
- Enabling
Once you're sober, you'll have a better outlook on your life. You won't feel the need to hide away or feel shame for your actions.
One of the great things about sober living homes is that they teach you life skills and different ways to cope with stress. They also help you with anger management.
Having the support you need helps you form open and honest relationships with your friends and family. Also, the support of a sober living home will help you recover and stay sober.
Better Nutrition and Wellness
When you have a substance use disorder, your overall health suffers. This is because you can often be low on specific nutrients your body needs to stay healthy.
Addiction causes people not to eat enough or make poor food choices. When you have a poor diet long-term, you'll feel low on energy, depressed, and anxious. These feelings make you crave alcohol or drugs more, which causes you to become trapped in this cycle.
For example, alcohol can cause you to be low in vitamins A, C, E, and B, which can cause eye problems, nerve damage, and poor bone health. You'll typically feel tired all the time and experience weight loss.
Using opioids can cause you to be low in calcium, magnesium, and potassium. This puts you at risk for colon cancer and liver disease, and you'll tend to have stomach pain and heartburn.
The good news is, living sober allows you to focus on healing your body. You'll be able to eat nutritious foods and make significant changes to your overall diet. As a result, you'll feel better, have more energy, and improve your health.
Sober living homes focus on wellness and nutrition, helping you to heal and form healthy habits long-term.
Healthy Hobbies
When you're living with a substance use disorder, it impacts your life to the point it becomes the focus. As a result, you cannot participate in or enjoy activities outside your addiction.
With addiction, all your energy goes towards finding drugs or alcohol or going to the bar with friends.
When you start living sober, this changes dramatically. You'll begin to have time to pursue hobbies and other
activities that spark your interest.
Hobbies and activities many people turn to once they're sober include:
- Hiking
- Rock climbing
- Working out
- Attending new meetup groups
- Learning a new skill
- Reading more books
- Learning a new game
- Creating art
- Writing
- Photography
You can do anything that fuels your creativity and passion. Taking up hobbies helps break the cycle of addiction and redirect you toward healthy and enjoyable activities.
Sober living homes can help you make these new activities a habit in your daily life. Most sober living homes have workout rooms and game rooms. They also teach you life skills that help you to learn more about yourself. All of this makes your transition to long-term sober living much more manageable.
Improved Mental Health
Many people who struggle with addiction also suffer from mental health problems. People often use drugs or alcohol to cope with emotions or ease symptoms of an undiagnosed mental health disorder.
While many people with addiction have mental health disorders, this doesn't mean that one disorder caused the other.
People with substance use disorders typically have mental health disorders such as:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Bipolar disorder
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Schizophrenia
- Personality disorders
When you enter into recovery, you'll get access to behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a standard treatment for people with substance abuse disorders. CBT is a talk therapy focusing on understanding how you feel, think, and view yourself.
CBT focuses on identifying and changing your negative thinking and behavioral patterns. CBT is based on the fact that addictive behaviors result from negative thoughts, which turn into negative feelings.
You'll also get group therapy, which is essential to maintaining your sobriety. Group therapy allows you to receive advice, support, and motivation from others that are also struggling.
Once you receive treatment for these disorders, you'll start noticing significant changes in your mental health. You'll be able to find healthy ways to cope when you have feelings of anxiety and depression.
Coping with daily stress is critical to long-term sobriety; you'll feel happier and healthier when you're living sober.
Deeper Spiritual Connection
Many people don't realize that spirituality plays a significant role in recovery. In fact, spirituality plays a major part in 12-step recovery programs like AA. The idea is that your recovery can begin when you let get go of having control over your life.
It's then you can look beyond yourself to trust the guidance from a higher power. Spirituality can also be when you feel a connection to the universe or nature. The best part of spirituality is you can define it by what it means to you.
Studies show that 73% of addiction treatment programs in the United States have a spiritual element because of how much it helps people stick to their recovery plan. People who turn to spirituality also tend to maintain their sobriety long-term.
Because you'll have access to this in your recovery treatment program, you'll have the opportunity to incorporate spirituality into your recovery.
Many people find spiritual practices like meditating, journaling and reconnecting with themselves to be very healing. This gives them the strength to make it through the early stages of recovery.
Some people feel lost during the initial stages of recovery and turn to spirituality for help. This is because it helps people find a sense of purpose in their life. It also allows people to develop more meaningful connections with themselves and others.
You'll Realize You Aren't Alone
Many people with substance use disorder feel isolated and alone. They feel like nobody understands what they are going through. Also, they're often afraid to talk to friends or family about their use.
It can also be scary to go alone and get treatment. People fear withdrawal symptoms and feel they won't be able to cope with them. People also fear what their friends and family will think when they finally open up about their problems.
Feelings of isolation also drive people back into the cycle of addiction because they think nobody will understand or be able to help them.
However, once you enter into treatment and start living sober, you'll be able to see how much help you'll receive. First, you'll get 24/7 support to manage your withdrawal symptoms while getting individual counseling.
Having support like career counseling and life skills training allows you to connect further with people.
Group therapy meetings also make a huge difference. You'll be surrounded by people encouraging you who have gone through the exact same thing.
Realizing you aren't alone will give you hope and more drive to continue your recovery. You'll also make new friends in the process, which will encourage you to try new activities.
If you're struggling with addiction, discovering that you aren't alone is incredibly healing overall, making it one of the best benefits of living sober.
Enjoy the Benefits of Sober Living
Now that you know more about sober living and its benefits, it will change how you look at the recovery process overall. Remember, you aren't alone, and support is available.
If you're looking for help with your recovery, you can turn to Progress House for all your needs. We offer residential treatment programs and sober living for people struggling with addiction.
We have high-intensity treatment centers where you'll receive medical care and medication-assisted treatment. In addition, our sober living homes offer help with employment, life skills, counseling, and more.
We've been helping families for over 58 years and will guide you through the different phases of your recovery. Make sure you fill out our online application to get started with treatment.