How Is IOP with Housing Different from Sober Living Houses?

IOP is the acronym that stands for intensive outpatient program. This is a form of addiction treatment that is on an outpatient basis. It helps recovering addicts to move from the in-patient residential treatment environment on to independently based recovery. Living in IOP housing helps to encourage sobriety accountability, deter relapse, and reinforce critical life skills that you need to live an alcohol or drug free life style.

IOP vs. Outpatient Addiction Treatment: What Are The Differences?

The standard form of outpatient addiction treatment offers a larger amount of flexibility for those individuals who are recovering than does a typical residential program. Both forms of treatment are proactive, yet outpatient treatment delivers the capability of living at home and still going to school or working while attending treatment sessions. Going through this form of drug rehab helps individuals to maintain a sober life while practicing the life skills that they picked up in the intensive residential treatment. A supportive structure involving routine outpatient group meetings helps to reinforce this all.

IOP is not the same as outpatient treatment. The intensive nature of the outpatient program brings in an intensive care aspect that gives clients the capability of working along with a therapist or counselor in a one on one setting to focus on particular areas in recovery that might be harder for them than the other ones. This permits a greater amount of individualized and specially tailored care along with closer scrutiny of possible issues that might personally trigger a relapse into drugs or alcohol.

Sober living houses are also known by their more common name of halfway houses. They function like a bridge between the strictly monitored inpatient facility and program and the so-called “real world.” After you leave the inpatient program and go back to your old life, you may find it a difficult transition to get back to the routine of everyday life (minus the drugs or alcohol). The idea with a sober living house is to provide an in the middle recovery choice that permits you to reinforce concepts learned while in rehab.

How Long Are IOP Programs?

IOP programs run for approximately eight weeks. This has nothing to do with the amount of time for which a patient can opt to remain in the sober living home. Halfway house clients are allowed to stay there for the amount of time that they require, even if this is well past the time for finishing their IOP program.

Who Needs IOP?

Any individual who is undergoing recovery from a form of addiction can gain great advantages from participating in an IOP program. An ideal candidate for one of these programs would possess the following attributes:

  • They finished detox successfully as well as inpatient rehab
  • They enrolled in one of the various sober living programs
  • They enjoy a home environment that is stable
  • They are in the process of making a recovery from a serious addiction
  • They might have suffered from chronic relapse before

Benefits of IOP and Sober Living Dual Enrollment

There are many advantages to participating in both an IOP and a sober living house program. The dual practice improves the chances of ongoing sobriety. This added consistency, structure, accountability, and peer support helps recovering addicts to set up sober daily routines which promote continuous recovery. There will be many meetings with therapists or counselors as well as group sessions with sobriety coaches to establish and achieve sobriety goals. This form of recovery is especially effective for those who formed solid relationships with their peers as they went through the 12 step recovery program.

Being in a sober living house also discourages a life of crime and promotes longer-term employment prospects. The support services these patients receive encourage them to build a stable and healthy new life while recovering. Recovering addicts in these programs get volunteer, educational, and employment assistance.

Finally, the dual IOP and sober living houses boost physical and mental health while recovering. Patients in both programs work everyday to attain their goals of recovery and to live in a mentally and physically balanced lifestyle. As they are completing the IOP programs, the recovering addicts will simultaneously learn the ways to set up a healthy daily routine that allows them to live on a semi-independent basis in a sober home with other similarly recovering addicts.

In Conclusion

When you are ready to make that first step, do not go through it alone. Call our trained counselors today at 844-639-8371. They are waiting to hear from you right now!

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