Recovering in a Community: Halfway Houses in Chicago

Relapsing is the constant challenge faced by people recovering from drug or alcohol addiction. Once you leave the rehab center it is often disheartening to realize that all the old urges and problems are still there and still eating away at your resolve. Sobriety and addiction recovery are therefore ongoing processes and the fact that they are long-term commitments makes them all the more daunting.

Because recovery does not end after rehab, aftercare becomes crucial in preventing rehab. Stairway to Freedom’s Halfway Houses in Chicago provide recovering patients with the support and the environment they need to make sobriety stick. Stairway to Freedom provides patients with a safe, supportive environment to fight their addictions in the crucial time right after rehab. Specifically, they help fight an often unaddressed challenge of recovery– loneliness.

Halfway House Community and Aftercare

Recovery is an incredibly lonely road. Very often you are simply on your own. You cannot interact with the people who enabled your addiction. Sometimes the people around you think that rehab is a magical cure, and do not understand the risks of relapse. They do not understand that their offer of “Just one drink,” is a terrible temptation. Even your friends and family do not quite understand your struggles. Their well-meaning offers of help or their advice make matters worse. Recovery becomes linked with isolation and the feeling that you are on your own.

Loneliness and isolation help weaken the resolve attained after rehab. Stairway to Freedom understands this loneliness and instead of leaving a recovering addict to their own devices, it places them in a supportive community of people who understand what the patient is going through. Recovery becomes a peer-based process, where others equally committed t recovery can help you stay honest and disciplined. Recovery becomes a cooperative venture and not an alienating process.

Structure and Surroundings

Of course, the Stairway to Freedom Chicago Sober Living homes are structured environments to help prevent relapse. There are random drug and breathalyzer test and the environment is clean. There are also House Meetings that help you stay on track with your goals.

It is also simply a comfortable place to live with all of the modern amenities for life. A clean and comfortable new environment post-rehab is another overlooked key to success, since the isolation and loneliness of recovery are often made worse by returning to the old environments that encouraged addiction. There is nothing more agonizing than fighting temptation by yourself, in the same old living room or bedroom, alone, at night, when you would have gone out to drink or do drugs.

But recovery does not need to be a difficult and isolated path. Contact us for more on information on how we can help you.