Lindsey and I visited the CORE in Brooklyn this week, which may be the only sober house in New York City. It's run by the magical Joe Shrank and has a very large dog, Lucy, and a cook, Anthony. Anthony talked about food as part of recovery and offered to make us layer cake, which happens to be my personal favorite. So his is a promise I won't let go. Let them eat cake and not substances. There's the new war on drugs in a nutshell.
Sober living is not what it used to be. The description of a halfway house as a run-down building with a bunch of scary people on the edge of town no longer fits. Sober living these days can be 5-star hotel for very high-functioning individuals. So the stigma about them has to end so more sober houses and sober communities can be established to help more people get and stay sober.
Sober living is the step down from treatment centers, which we know as rehab. Sierra Tucson, where we went a few weeks ago is a rehab facility, with medical and psychiatric staff to oversee detox and early recovery. Sanctuary in Delray Beach, Butterfly House in Wellington, the Salvation Army in Sarasota, and the Way Back in Connecticut are sober living facilities. While the Salvation Army is more institutional than luxurious, and has a wide demographic of people, it also has the advantage of being free. Anyone who wants it can get help there.
Other sober houses have a wide variety of monthly costs for clients, and the ones we visited are very cool places where anyone would be comfortable staying long term. The food is excellent and the company is not so shabby, either. What sober houses offer is the supported, structured environment that recovering addicts and alcoholics need to rebuild their lives. In the field of recovery it's proven that the longer people live in supported, structured sober environments, the greater the odds for their long-term success.
So you'd think sober communities would be a welcome national idea. And it is. The Americans with Disabilites Act is a Federal Law that supports sober houses where zoning allows. The glitch is attitude on the local level. When sober houses try to open in new areas, communities rebel. They don't object to sober houses in general, they just want them situated in industrial areas far away from them. I have been to zoning commission meetings where naming-calling was so virulent and hateful against sober people trying to speak for their home that I felt ill by the assault. The sober house in question ultimately won a federal lawsuit against the county commission that had blocked it. But the lasting harm is attitude people have about recovering addicts. Stigma, name-calling, negative feelings are all as toxic as the disease itself. It's time for the general public to understand that recovering addicts are the best hope for the war on drugs and everything else that's out of control in our culture.
