SOBER LIVING SAVES LIVES.
See the research for yourself
Theoretical Framework and Impact of the Phoenix Sober Active Community Model
Brett Wyker, MS & Jacki Hillios, PhD
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​ Sober living picks up where treatment services leave off by offering a welcoming, safe and supportive community to recover and heal. Recognizing the interpersonal trauma and social isolation are at the core of many people’s addiction, all programming is aimed at bringing individuals into a community that instills hope instead of fear and fosters personal growth without judgment. Peers who have lived experiences through their own recovery journey or personal connection to recovery, promote trust, hope and emotional safety.
What Did We Learn from Our Study on Sober Living Houses and Where Do We Go from Here? Douglas L. Polcin, Ed.D.* , Rachael Korcha, M.A.* , Jason Bond, Ph.D.* , and Gantt Galloway, Pharm.D.
​ Lack of a stable, alcohol and drug free living environment can be a serious obstacle to sustained abstinence. Destructive living environments can derail recovery for even highly motivated individuals. Sober living houses (SLHs) are alcohol and drug free living environments for individuals attempting to abstain from alcohol and drugs. They are not licensed or funded by state or local governments and the residents themselves pay for costs. The philosophy of recovery emphasizes 12-step group attendance and peer support. We studied 300 individuals entering two different types of SLHs over an 18 month period. This paper summarizes our published findings documenting resident improvement on measures of alcohol and drug use, employment, arrests, and psychiatric symptoms. Involvement in 12-step groups and characteristics of the social network were strong predictors of outcome, reaffirming the importance of social and environmental factors in recovery. The paper adds to our previous reports by providing a discussion of implications for treatment and criminal justice systems. We also describe the next steps in our research on SLHs, which will include: 1) an attempt to improve outcomes for residents referred from the criminal justice system and 2) a depiction of how attitudes of stakeholder groups create a community context that can facilitate and hinder the legitimacy of SLHs as a recovery modality.
Hereditary of Alcoholism: Causes, Prevention, and Treatment. Jacquelyn Jurewicz
Scarpelli (1999) defines a disease as “any harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional state of an organism, generally associated with certain signs and symptoms and differing in nature from physical injury”. Alcoholism is the addiction to alcohol, characterized by problems in decision-making and the inability to remain sober. Diseases are hereditary, and Alcoholism is a disease of the brain. Research and articles link Alcoholism and the factors which determine what makes an alcoholic, as well as the steps after the factors have been identified. One major factor within this information is genetics. The importance of determining a factor of Alcoholism is to further determine the solution to help people who find themselves diagnosed with the disease (Perez, 2022). The most common solution is rehabilitation and joining groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. There was also research on the ways to prevent the disease from taking control of the individual’s life. This paper explains the familial risks and environmental factors which lead to the inheritable disease known as Alcoholism. As well as ways to prevent and help manage the disease if it is detected.