Going to Sober Living for Addiction as a Young Man

by addictiontreatment

We’re humans, and as humans, we’re conditioned to want more out of life. We want more fun, more adventure, more enjoyment. One of the incredible concepts about addiction recovery  is that it teaches us that we can have “more” and lead fulfilling lives while being sober and without using substances.

As a Los Angeles-based sober living facility, we understand that the world often defines being “sober” as a boring way to live life. Practically everything that’s considered “fun” seems to be tainted by drugs, alcohol, or both. It’s the way big industry makes money– and it’s also the reason why there are 278,544 drug and alcohol related deaths among men every year. Here at The Last House, we ascribe to a different idea of what living “sober” is. We believe that sober living means making a lifestyle change that transforms us into confident, independent men ready to make the most of our lives. We believe that by fostering brotherhood and community, the young men that come through our doors can take Los Angeles and the rest of the world by storm when they graduate. We believe that living sober is the absolute best version of life, and that nothing else really compares.

Getting sober at a sober living facility helps us learn how to deal with life’s challenges as they happen, with the support of brothers and mentors to help us make the right decisions. When we focus on getting sober, we realize that we don’t have time to think about “what we may be missing”– and we really don’t have any desire to. Truth be told, with countless activities here in Los Angeles, we actually find that we’re able to both be more productive men and have more enjoyable and fulfilling experiences when we’re not using substances.

Sober living isn’t just a halfway point between addiction treatment and life outside. With the resources provided and the tools created here in the sober living community, young men in Los Angeles, New York, DC, and all over the country are learning how to make the most of their lives by realizing just how much strength they have without substances. Getting sober is a journey, not a sentence. It’s the most rewarding action you can take for yourself as a young man battling addiction, and sobriety will open up a world of opportunity that you never thought possible.

Here at The Last House sober living facility, we believe that getting sober is a gift, and we teach our young men to embrace the possibilities of a sober life. Situated in sunny Los Angeles, we provide a number of activities and resources for our men to learn responsibility, accountability, independence, and brotherhood. When our men leave The Last House, they’re not just not using. They’re leading more fulfilling lives than they’d ever imagined. Call us at 1-866-677-0090 to get started with The Last House today.

When is an Addiction an Addiction?

by addiction

Misuse/abuse. Regular use. Tolerance. Dependence. Addiction.

The stages of addiction might manifest differently based on the place or person, but misuse or abuse of drugs is still one of the most likely ways to start down the slippery slope towards addiction. In fact, the misuse or abuse of substances is so prevalent that the FDA indicates that “in 2017, an estimated 18 million people (more than 6 percent of those aged 12 and older)… misused [prescription] medications at least once in the past year.” While misuse is not the same as abuse, both actions are often our first foray into using drugs in ways that they aren’t supposed to be used. In misusing drugs, we’re using drugs for a purpose other than what they’re intended for, although we may not be necessarily be looking to get high. In abusing drugs, we’re using drugs for one alternative purpose: getting high.  

For some of us, misusing drugs for purposes that seem as innocuous as relieving a headache or getting over a cold can lead our bodies to crave more and more of the feeling the drug provides. In a very short matter of time, what was our attempt to self-medicate can lead right to regular use, tolerance, dependence, and then addiction. As for abusing drugs, if we’re willingly consuming substances with the purpose of getting high, then there, too, is only a matter of time before addiction becomes a real threat.

How is addiction defined?

Because misuse and abuse of drugs are not the same, yet often used interchangeably, it follows that many of us might also be confused as to how the other stages of addiction are defined.

To start, regular use is best defined as the point in which we begin to display a pattern of use. If we misused a prescription drug once, say for a headache, and liked the feeling, we may do it again– though this time not so much for the pain as for the feeling we get from it. Later on, we may try it once more. Eventually, we’re no longer using the drug for pain, but simply out of habit.

We might not be addicted yet, but we’ve reached the first phase– where drug use has gone from misusing to now using consistently.

At the next phase is tolerance. When we’re becoming tolerant of a drug, we find that we need more and more of it to obtain the same high that we used to get from a much smaller amount of it. If we abused a prescription drug just for the thrill of it the first time, because we liked it a little the second time, and maybe because we wanted some more the third time, by the time we reach tolerance, we’ve built up a habit of using the drug and our system now needs more in order for us to feel it. As we increase the amount of the drug we use, some of us actually begin to feel like we can operate even with a large amount of it in our system. This is why this stage can also be called the “risky use” stage. We can, in effect, become so used to having large amounts of the drug in our system that we feel like there’s nothing in our system at all. Some of us get behind the wheel, attempt to go to work, and exhibit outwardly dangerous behavior due to the drug’s now habitual place in our system.

Following tolerance is dependence, which is when our bodies begin to enter periods of withdrawal if we don’t have access to the drug we’ve misused or abused. Withdrawal is a combination of physical and mental symptoms that can be relatively mild or life threatening. The severity of withdrawals often depends on the drug, the user, and how long the drug has been in the system. When we’re dependent on a drug, we haven’t quite reached the stage of complete addiction, but we are dangerously close to it.

Finally, addiction follows dependence. What makes addiction different than the other stages is that addiction is a mental disease. Addiction results from a person taking a drug repeatedly, but the telltale sign of addiction is when that person cannot stop taking it. A great definition of addiction is that it is a state “marked by a change in behavior caused by the biochemical changes in the brain after continued substance abuse.” Unlike dependence, where we exhibit physical distress when we try to stop using, tolerance, where we need more of a drug, or regular use, where we’ve first started a habit, addiction is the culmination of all of the above. Using the drug becomes our main priority, at the expense of anything and everything that may get in our way. When we reach the point of addiction, whether our drug use started as a result of abuse or misuse becomes secondary. At this point, professional help is highly recommended to help get us on the right track to recovery.

Defining when addiction starts can be difficult, but at The Last House sober living facility, we help our men conquer addiction once and for all. We believe that addiction is wholly treatable, and that the sober living community can help men identify the underlying issues behind why they misused or abused a drug in the first place. We focus on brotherhood, unity, and responsibility here– traits that, when combined, can help a man transform into a better version of himself than he ever thought possible. Call 1-866-677-0090 to get started with The Last House today.

Being a Young, Sober Man in Los Angeles

by Recovery

Los Angeles. The home of film, dreams, beautiful people, and activities galore. Being a young, sober man in Los Angeles means tons of exciting opportunities to explore, mature, and strengthen our independence. After all, there’s no better way to enjoy the City of Angels than with a clear mind and a sense of adventure.

Here at The Last House sober living community, we help our men make the most of the opportunities Los Angeles offers by arranging social engagements like sober parties, service
events, conventions, fellowships and mandatory house outings, all designed to help us learn how to face common challenges with the support of our peers.

As a young, sober man in Los Angeles, the city is your oyster, and we help you find new ways to make your mark on life. As strong, independent men, we’re designed to be so much more than what addiction wants us to be. It’s the skills we learn, the passions we find, and the activities we enjoy in sober living that help us become the best versions of ourselves.

Some of the sober activities we enjoy here at The Last House on a sunny Los Angeles day include yoga, morning meditation, and surfing. On weekly outings, we like to mix it up with activities like golf, restaurant outings, and a skiing trip every once in a while.

Getting sober in Los Angeles starts with a mindset, and the sober living community that we foster here helps our men see sobriety as not just avoiding alcohol and substances, but as a new way to look at life. Every activity we enjoy ties us to something deeper– be it a sense of brotherhood, renewed confidence, or strengthened independence.

The activities Los Angeles offers don’t serve as mere distractions from drinking or using, but become new ways for us to exercise our passions and stimulate our interests. With the right mindset and a community of brothers behind us, we can make the most of young, sober life here in Los Angeles– because every day can be a new adventure.

Here at The Last House sober living facility, the young men that we work with learn just how fun getting sober in Los Angeles can be. Through the activities they enjoy at our sober living facility, they form powerful bonds with brothers, strengthen their self-confidence, and become independent men that will let nothing stand in the way of living their best lives.  Call us at 1-866-677-0090 to get started with The Last House today.

Goodbye Doubt, Hello Hope

by Recoverytreatment

Goodbye Doubt, Hello Hope

The very beginning of The Big Book’s third edition makes a bold assertion that describes the path from addiction to recovery: “Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.”

For many of us, hope was never something we considered while addicted. To be hopeful was to expect better days, and to look for more to come even in a situation that seemed grim. No– we merely survived during our addiction. We went through the motions of living, but the only thing that was functioning properly was our physical body, and even that showed signs of deterioration. Our mind and our soul were both gone, taken hostage by a substance that we’d thought was our savior.

Somehow, however, we managed to say that we needed help, and with the guidance of family members, friends, loved ones, and professionals, we got that help from an addiction treatment center. We learned how to look deep inside of ourselves to identify flaws, triggers, and imbalances that may have led us to use substances in the first place. We learned to forgive ourselves for the actions we could not control during our addiction, and how to make things right with the ones we’d hurt. We learned to free ourselves from addiction, and to love ourselves again.

Here at The Last House, we’re here to help you restore the hope that addiction took away. While treatment provides us with the knowledge and practices to defeat addiction, it’s sober living that gives us the confidence that we can return to the real world and be even better than we were before. As men, there are certain things that we’re expected to do in this life, certain responsibilities that we’re expected to take care of. Sober living teaches us how to dive right back into life and handle those responsibilities with poise and tact, without the fear of returning to substances or vices. It teaches us some of the last lessons we must learn in order to be truly free– not just from addiction, but from the doubt that we may not be able to stay on the right track post-treatment.

What does sober living teach me?

Sober living is the first step in taking control of your life after treatment, and, as such, the lessons you learn in a sober living community will no doubt be of high importance. It may surprise you, however, to learn that the sober living spin on “teaching” is less about telling you what not to do, and much more about helping you expand your independence and hone your own decision-making skills. “Lessons” are traded for experiences, and “classmates” are your community brothers. At The Last House and most other sober living communities, we work to help you turn the person you already are into a better version of yourself that will be ready to take on anything life throws at you. In a way, if you had to categorize the sober living experience as “teaching,” then it would be fitting to say that sober living teaches you how to be a better version of, well, you!

So, where’s the whole “doubt” concept fit into all this?

If we pause and think for a second, we can probably all remember a time during our addiction where we doubted whether treatment was worth it. We may have taken a hard look at our lives up until that point, and decided that treatment would be pointless, and that we were better off ignoring our situation, or attempting to fix it ourselves. Of course, we didn’t know then what we know now about addiction: that, as The Big Book says, fighting it is all but impossible without the help of others (so we can’t be too hard on ourselves) but, regardless, we can probably all remember how much doubt and helplessness prevented us from reaching out for help sooner.

These behaviors are learned. Through no fault of our own, our addiction takes our mind and body hostage and forces us to do things, think things, and crave things that we would have never done otherwise. Through treatment, we learn to get to the root of these causes and beat that addiction, but it’s via sober living that we hone the skills we need to stop doubt and helplessness from creeping back in even after our treatment.

At The Last House, we train ourselves to beat doubt and those feelings of helplessness by focusing on building our independence and a strong sense of community. Everything we do in our sober living community hinges on our being accountable to our brothers. Even something as simple as being late to dinner invokes a consequence. The goal is that by training ourselves to be responsible for the sake of others, we will learn to be responsible despite of ourselves. After all, it’s a lot harder to doubt what we can do when we’ve practiced doing it for others. As The Big Book says, learning to take responsibility for others is the spirit of successful recovery.

Through our sober living community, we learn how to use experiences and community to become even better versions of ourselves. In so doing, we eliminate feelings of doubt and hopelessness, replacing them with hope for and confidence in our ability to excel in the future. There’s no magic going on here, and everything we learn is already inside of us. Sober living just helps us realize it!

The Last House is a men’s sober living facility in West Los Angeles. Our talented staff and carefully cultivated approach to sober living helps us churn out amazingly talented, self-aware gentleman, primed to make a difference in their communities. Call us at
1-866-677-0090 to start your plan today!

Let Your Feelings Fuel You

by Recoverytreatment

Let Your Feelings Fuel You

Ever notice how fierce competitors like to get slapped before the start of an intense fight? It’s not because they like the pain. It’s because the pain fuels them.

Sober living is a lot like that slap in the face. It’s gonna hurt like heck, but if we let it, it can make us even more amped up to go out and take control of our lives when we graduate. If we end up liking it, we’ll see gains in our lives like never before.

The Big Book is very direct about the importance of pain in recovery. “Pain is the admission price to a new life,” it says. It also says that eventually, we “begin to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.” Couldn’t get much clearer than that.

Sober living isn’t designed to hurt us, but it is designed to help us work out those kinks in our lives that we either thought no one knew about, or genuinely forgot about ourselves. Once we recover from addiction, we learn very quickly that there are things and people in this world that will stop at nothing to see us back where we were– helpless and on our backsides. If we don’t learn to trim ourselves of all of the extra mental and spiritual fat we put on in the years leading up to our substance use, it’s going to be quite difficult to get through some of the tough times we might face after graduation.

We do that by being real with each other in sober living. We’re accountable. We work as a unit. We learn respect, punctuality, and how to build the right kind of pride. We may feel picked on or like we can’t keep up with the demands and rigor that sober living requires, but we’ll never feel alone. Using these feelings to push ourselves to work harder, make smarter decisions, and step outside of our comfort zones is the only way to do things here. If our feelings aren’t fueling us, we’re doing something wrong.

Sober living is like P90X for our feelings. Ready. Set. Go.

The Last House is a premier men’s sober living facility based in West Los Angeles. We turn men into gentlemen by helping them build the skills and confidence they need to demolish the competition: the real world. Call 1-866-677-0090 to see how we can help you, your son, or your husband today!

Making Lessons out of “Losses”

by Recoverytreatment

Making Lessons out of “Losses”

Sober living wouldn’t be very effective if we didn’t feel comfortable screwing something up every once in a while. In fact, though sober living communities like The Last House are here to help us plot the right path to the real world, they also function as a great place to make the mistakes we simply couldn’t afford to make out there.

Why?

 

Because mistakes make us stronger, smarter, and better. The Big Book mentions mistakes eight times, and almost every time, it’s in encouraging us to do one thing: learn from them. Think about it- in just about everything we learn, mistakes are par for the course. Baby’s going to walk? He’s going to fall down first. Making the transition from a tricycle to a bicycle? Prepare for some scuffed knees. Driver’s permit time? More like time for some bumped orange cones.

 

If even the most fundamental lessons we learn in life are meant to be accompanied by mistakes, then why should sober living be different? It shouldn’t, and it isn’t. It’s okay to make mistakes in sober living. The important concept is learning from them.

 

The Big Book suggests we learn from our mistakes by analyzing them (“we [should] continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.”) Here at The Last House, we add to that by making sure that we hold ourselves accountable to our brothers. We live in unity, and, as such, any mistake one man makes affects the team. This teaches us that every action we take affects more than just us, and that, no matter what, even in the wrong, we’ll always have someone to support us and lift us back up.

 

We can make lessons out of everything we do, but learning to make lessons out of mistakes in particular teaches us that our battles aren’t lost when we mess up, and that forward progress can be made even when we think we’re screwed.

Sober living doesn’t just teach us how to live as recovered men. It teaches us how to live as conquerors. Let’s slap a band-aid on and learn from our mistakes. When we put our minds to it, our forward progress can’t be stopped!

The Last House is a men’s sober living facility based in West Los Angeles. We know the tools men need to become recovery warriors, and we equip them everyday to take control of their lives and make gold where others said was bronze.

Call us at 1-866-677-0090 to get started today!

Shedding the Stereotypes of Addiction

by addictionRecovery

Shedding the Stereotypes of Addiction

When most people think of addicts, they think of three things: ego, entitlement, and selfishness. People believe that, particularly in the millennial era, addiction is characterized by spoiled twenty and thirty-somethings who weren’t used to hearing the word “no” enough when they were growing up. We know that isn’t really the truth, and that addiction affects a great deal of people of all ages, races, shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. If addiction was only an issue for “spoiled brat millenials,” then the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, a notorious drunk in his own right, would not have co-founded the iconic organization at nearly forty years old, and it certainly wouldn’t have been founded in the 1930s (millennials weren’t around then, yet).

While we know this stereotype is not completely accurate, of course, some young men do fit the bill. As a sober living facility in Los Angeles, we take on a wide range of men that come to us from situations in which entitlement, ego, or selfishness did drive them to use substances (or if it didn’t drive them to use, drove them to continue using). After recovery, these men aren’t necessarily ready to take the plunge into a world that might not be as forgiving as family members or loved ones were, and they enlist our help to get them prepared.

At The Last House, we’re in the business of combating these negative stereotypes with a few positive ones of our own. Our facilities foster brotherhood, companionship, discipline, self-worth independence, and accountability. We make the perfect gentlemen out of men that otherwise may have had trouble finding their way after treatment. The work we do in shedding these stereotypes as a sober living facility allows the men that we work with to leave our program as viable, contributing members of society, and gentlemen that anyone would love to be around.

How do you shed the stereotypes of addiction?

The Big Book is very clear on the power of positive thought in addiction treatment, and that’s one of the primary ways we as a sober living facility slowly shed the stereotypes portrayed by our clients. As men who have escaped the cycle of addiction, the power of thought goes a lot further for us than for others who never had to wrestle with losing the ability to rationalize, make good decisions, and control their wants and needs. Chapter three of The Big Book hits the nail on the head: “The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, must be smashed.” While this particular passage refers to action we should take while addicted, it makes it very clear that those that have gone through addiction are not like other people in many ways, which couldn’t be more right. One of these is the power of thought.

The power of thought begins with the understanding that the sober living facility is not a place for men to come and relax. It is a place of work, and a place to be only if you are committed to bettering yourself and working to help better your brothers who stand beside you. If this is not your ultimatum, we urge you to leave and pursue another avenue, or to try your hand at returning to the real world where you may or may not excel, depending on how prepared you are upon entering. We champion the power of thought by reinforcing positives, and refusing to overlook negatives. Land a job interview? Heaps of praise from our staff and your brothers. Come late to one meeting out of ten? There’s a consequence– no matter the other nine perfect attendances. Thought processes start to shift when it is realized that every action has a reaction, and that even the slightest deviation from rules, no matter how much good you’ve done, invokes some sort of punishment. We take this strategy from The Big Book itself, and its keen focus on accepting consequences as a means of growing in recovery (“We know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences.”) Over time, a changing thought process drastically changes stereotypes concerning ego and attitude. Our clients learn very quickly that thinking things will go their way, and that they do not have to follow the rules of the house will land them in trouble with not just the staff, but with the brothers they have come to know, love, and hold accountable as well.

We also shed stereotypes by encouraging the men of our program to work to not only return to society without issue, but to return to society as gentlemen, and as better men than they were before they even got involved with substances. As individuals that have already battled through addiction and come out on the right side of treatment, our men already have clearer heads and a better sense of self worth than many of their peers who never went through an ordeal with addiction. We use that heightened self-awareness and self worth to encourage our men that now is as good a time as any to conquer those dreams, slay those dragons, and prove to the world that recovery is not just about quitting drugs. It’s about coming out better, stronger, and more powerful than ever before.

At The Last House of West Los Angeles, we offer premier sober living care for men that are ready to get more out of their lives, and to make an impact on their communities when they return home. To get started, call us right now at 1-866-677-0090. We can’t wait to meet you!

Sober Living, in Theory

by addictionRecovery

Sober living, in theory

Everyone knows what addiction is. It’s a vile disease that takes over the brain, renders our will useless, and ultimately wreaks havoc on our entire body while driving us away from family members, friends, loved ones, and those who care about us. Thanks to the movement to generate more information about addiction, we also now know what addiction treatment is. We understand just how powerful looking deep inside of ourselves to fix our problems can be, and we realize that therapy can be a wonderful way of getting to the root of the issues that cause us to rely on substances in the first place.

Sober living, however, is a concept that hasn’t quite caught up to the mainstream as fast as other aspects of the addiction recovery process have. While many people credit addiction treatment with ridding them of their addiction, they forget the powerful impact sober living can make when it comes to transitioning from treatment to life on their own.

As Dr. Drew said during our radio interview on his eponymous show, addiction treatment has changed. In the generation of millennials, addiction treatment has become more about coddling and less about learning the skills to excel in life after treatment. In some cases, there is a severe disconnect between the behavior men display, and the actions they feel entitled to receive from others.

At a facility like The Last House, we connect the disconnect.

Our sober living facility focuses on making men the very best they can be by championing their independence, confidence, and self-sufficiency, and encouraging them to build bonds with brothers that will last a lifetime. The Big Book couldn’t say it any better: “it became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally secure among grown-up people, we would have to put our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all those around us.” In our eyes, brotherhood is key to a successful transition to life after treatment. Having a tribe that will hold you accountable, force you to keep your word, take responsibility for your actions, and put the well-being of the group before yourself is an invaluable part in learning the skills necessary to make the most out of life after treatment.

Sober living, in theory, is designed to make you more than just a better person after treatment. It’s designed to give you the tools you need to become a contributing member of your community, and a champion of the recovery process for others that may need your guidance. At The Last House, we follow the Big Book’s assertion that being able to help others that are suffering through the same things we suffered through before treatment both keeps us on the straight and narrow, and allows us to give back. In fact, The Big Book couldn’t be any clearer about how important being able to help others is, especially in saying that “helping others is the foundation stone of our recovery.”

The core values of sober living

At The Last House, there are three concepts we preach more than anything: the concept of unity, the power of peer support, and the importance of life skills. Understanding these key values is the key to success for our clients.

Unity is a powerful tool in the transition from treatment to life on your own afterwards. Addiction treatment is not a one-man process, and the extension of treatment afterwards shouldn’t be either. Unity means knowing that your brothers have your back through thick and thin, and reassuring them that you have theirs. It’s what gives you the confidence to better yourself, and to step out of your comfort zone. The wonderful thing about sober living is that, although we operate in a very structured environment, it isn’t the same as treatment. Clients have the freedom to go out, work, engage with others, and live their lives. This is where the power of unity shows through the most. The brothers in our sober living homes are never forced to form bonds and relationships– their shared environment, triumphs, and failures causes them to form organically. These bonds are hard to break, and they last for years after graduation from our sober living program.

Peer support is next, and ties directly into our unity concept. In sober living, your brother is your best friend, your confidant, and your biggest fan. Whether it’s cooking meals for each other, taking turns cleaning up recreation areas, or enjoying a group outing together, sober living provides an environment brimming with opportunities for clients to give and receive help to and from each other. We find this so important, because the same practice of helping each other in the sober living community becomes a learned practice that clients replicate after graduation. As The Big Book says, one of the best ways to stay sober is to surround yourselves with others who are working on the same goal. Two are much stronger than one, and a group focused on the same thing is virtually unstoppable.

Finally, at The Last House and most other sober living communities, life skills are created, developed, and strengthened every day. In every aspect of what we do, we incorporate concepts that tie in with something greater– being the best person you can be, and a viable contributing member of your community after recovery.

Sober living is an awesome way to build the skills you need to transition into life after treatment with ease. The Last House is Los Angeles’ leading sober living community for men looking for guidance, support, and strength from other brothers. Call us today at
1-866-677-0090 to see how we can help you!

The Gentleman’s Guide to Recovery

by addictionRecovery

The Gentleman’s Guide to Recovery

Chris Kirby, Director of Admissions here at The Last House, kicked off a Dr. Drew segment quite pointedly. “We’re dealing with a disease that is characterized by ego, entitlement, and selfishness,” he said.

He couldn’t be more right.

As drugs and alcohol have become more and more mainstream in American culture, many millennials have suffered the devastating consequences of addiction. Fortunately, addiction awareness has increased, and many of these men and women are getting the help they need at recovery facilities nationwide.

When they leave these facilities, however, there can sometimes be a steep learning curve, particularly if their treatment was coddling or didn’t present the real-world experiences that they would likely face after graduation. For men, this can be an issue, because a “learning curve” could mean trouble finding a job or providing for their families.

This is where sober living comes in.

At The Last House, an all-male sober living house in West Los Angeles, we focus on the exact opposite of coddling, and mitigate ego, entitlement and selfishness by providing a rigorous but fair living environment and pushing our clients to get out into the workforce, take responsibility for their actions, and be proud of who they are after treatment, without relying on others like family members and friends to do things for them.

Sober living facilities like The Last House place a premium on providing support for men that need a system that will allow them to get back on their feet, champion their recovery, and have an encouraging tribe of brothers to help them make the right decisions. We’re here not only to help men transition back to life on their own. We’re here to make them gentlemen, and, as the

The Big Book says, to help them learn how to drive and motivate others to pursue recovery as well.

How does sober living make me a gentleman?

Page 88 of The Big Book couldn’t be clearer: “We alcoholics are undisciplined.”

This statement doesn’t just apply to alcoholics, though. Many men who have suffered from addiction and gone through treatment may have the discipline to refrain from using substances, but this doesn’t mean that they have the discipline for everything. Just like anything else, we have to learn discipline and the importance of it in order to train ourselves to do the things we need to do for our lives, our health, and our families after treatment. In learning discipline, we also learn self-reliance, and acquire an essential trait of the gentleman: the ability to control ourselves and become truly independent.

In sober living, men learn to appreciate a structured environment, rules, and discipline, in much the same way the military learns structure and order. We have curfews, required meetings, and consequences for our actions that make us that much more inclined to follow procedures. It’s not that rules are shoved down the throat, or that punishments are harsh or unfair (for missing a mandatory meeting, for instance, the required and fair consequence is to write an essay on the importance of punctuality), but we learn that rules and parameters are actually healthy for us in a way that we probably wouldn’t have out on our own.

The Big Book is the inspiration behind the sober living facility’s discipline policy, and it couldn’t make more sense:  “Did anyone ever hear of a society which couldn’t somehow discipline its members and enforce obedience to necessary rules and regulations?”

In sober living, we know that the only way to get the most out of each other, to become gentlemen and champions of the benefits of recovery, is to hold each other to a standard of excellence and order. That standard is upheld by the rules we follow.

Sober living also makes men into gentlemen by teaching the importance of self-reliance. The Big Book speaks about self-reliance in a number of ways, and, it is true that when addicted, self-reliance can sometimes prevent us from getting the help we need. However, after treatment, it is important that we learn to rely on ourselves again. In fact, it is one of the markers of a true gentleman, and it shows the world that we have what it takes to take care of ourselves and make notable contributions to our communities.

When addicted, the world often sees us as people that cannot control ourselves. Addiction can make us a nervous wreck almost incapable of functioning normally in society, and at this stage, self-reliance is out of the question. With treatment and the right sober living plan, however, this changes. The Big Book uses the phrase “from a trembling, despairing, nervous wreck, had emerged a man brimming over with self-reliance and contentment” when describing the man that has successfully recovered with the help of such treatment. At The Last House sober living facility, we teach this self-reliance by forcing our clients to do for themselves. Whether this means rotating group dinner shifts, going on job interviews, or showing up early to court dates, we show our men that self-reliance is all about an attitude, and the brothers in our facility help each other foster that attitude organically.

Being a gentleman starts with discipline, which transforms into a self-reliance that breeds confidence, surety, and meaningful societal contributions. At The Last House, our sober living community provides the tools men need to make more of themselves than they were even before addiction. We don’t just teach men to live life after addiction. We teach them to live life to the fullest. Call us at 1-866-677-0090, and start taking your life back today!

One Mind, One Body, One Soul: Aligning Yourself to Maximize Your Recovery

by mental healthRecovery

meditation in recovery

To align mind, body, and spirit is to live awakened. It is to become more in tune with not just who you are, but with the person you want to be, and even the person you used to be. We all have desires, passions, and dreams, but we often live in a way that prevents us from realizing them. Living this way stints our growth, and keeps us chained down. At The Last House sober living, we encourage young men to break those chains and live connected, both through activating their own mind, body, and spirit connection, and through forging uplifting bonds with their peers.

For a long time, addiction treatment was purely about the mind. It made sense, to an extent: because addiction is a mental illness, it was only fitting that recovery efforts focused on the mental implications of the illness. Unfortunately, not paying attention to the physical or spiritual consequences of addiction led to treatments that were not nearly as effective as they should have been. Over time, therapists found that they needed to adopt a more holistic approach to treatment, and the idea of treating the mind, the body, and the soul was born.

Sober living houses like The Last House could not be better suited for this kind of holistic addiction treatment experience. Here, we are just as focused on what is going on in your head as we are on how you feel, and even how you collaborate with others. That’s one of the reasons why we champion collaboration in everything we do. Being around a tribe of brothers always striving to better themselves invites you to do the same

What exactly does alignment mean?

Our bodies live in more than one dimension. There is the physical dimension that we see, touch, taste, hear and feel. Then there’s the mental dimension, and the spiritual. Most of us never really stop to consider how these dimensions might be intertwined, but they very much are. For instance, think of what happens if you tell yourself that you do not want to get out of bed and go to work, because you hate your job. Almost immediately, your bed begins to feel a lot more comfortable. That’s physical. You more than likely begin to think of jobs you would much rather have. An astronaut, perhaps? Or maybe a scientist? That’s mental. Then, as you slog off to brush your teeth, make the coffee, and get ready for the day, you can’t quite shake the feeling that you really don’t want to go in to this job. That’s the spiritual. Many people live in misalignment on a daily basis, and they don’t even realize it. They feel these things, but aren’t able to make the connection, and wonder why their life feels off.

The thing is, whether we like it or not, our bodies understand and are constantly aware of this connection at all times. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous makes the connection between the three dimensions very clear, as it pertains to drinking, and even indicates that the reason for alcohol addiction begins in the spiritual realm. It says: “we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.” In short, when we look inside ourselves, we can see the spiritual malady that causes a physical reaction when we pick up a bottle (to drink), and address it accordingly.

Alignment, then, is identifying that there is a connection, and changing our outlook accordingly. At The Last House, we focus on what it means to identify this connection in a number of ways. Number one, we encourage transparency, direction, and emotional vulnerability in our group sessions. Every man in the room has weaknesses and strengths, and we tell it like it is there. Encouraging one another to look inside and pull out things that we’ve kept hidden forces us to confront spiritual and mental stressors. Then, in sharing, we make a physical action out of what we’ve discovered inside.

Number two, we champion camaraderie. Every man shares a room with at least one other man. We eat meals together, go on outings together, laugh together, and cry together. We forge physical bonds through confronting our spiritual demons together, and we gain mental confidence by knowing each of us has each other’s back.

Finally, we provide tools for the future. Once we find out what our spiritual desires are by listening to our thoughts and looking inside ourselves, we make them happen by putting pen to paper, brick to mortar, and action to imagination. We completely stimulate, the mind, body, and soul so efficiently that our men begin to listen to their whole selves. They realize that they can make things happen in their physical worlds simply by listening to what they want and making a plan to get it. It’s this experience, and this power, that makes their recovery process not just so successful, but so life-changing.

Aligning yourself to maximize recovery is as simple as joining a dynamic sober living house like ours and listening to what your spirit has been telling you all along. We don’t know what makes an alcoholic pick up a drink even though they know it will kill them, or what makes a drug user use a dirty needle knowing it could mean dire consequences. We do, however, know that just as the mind, body, and spirit are connected when addiction sets in and they take those actions, the mind, body, and spirit must be aligned to guarantee true transformation in recovery.

If you’re looking for the alignment that you need to make your transition from drugs and alcohol complete, you need look no further than The Last House, a men’s structured sober living program in Mar Vista, California. Call us today at (855)998-5278.