Staying at a halfway house means that you’re close to the start of your new life living outside of a treatment facility. While our program is geared toward addressing your specific needs, you can also take steps to ensure that you’re receiving the maximum benefits.
Use Taught Tools
Your presence at a halfway house means that you likely recently exited an inpatient program at a recovery center. During your time there, you were likely taught specific skills, strategies and techniques for resisting temptation. Actually putting these concepts into practice is critical. Ideas from a book are useful only when they are used.
Ask Questions
While you may have taken some notes or remembered key points from your time in inpatient treatment, that doesn’t mean you can recall every detail. Keep in mind that the staff members at the halfway house are there to help you. When you’re struggling to remember what to do in the face of temptation, ask.
Remember You’re Human
You may feel tempted at points during your stay at the halfway house; you may find yourself staring at the phone and wanting to call someone to obtain drugs or alcohol. The urge growing within you can be stopped, and part of controlling it involves remembering that you’re a human being. The staff members do not expect you to never have tempting thoughts. You can and should go to them and talk to them to work through the problems.
Maximize the Resources
The halfway house provides you with a greater level of independence and freedom than you have likely experienced in awhile. As a result, you may want to spend as much time away as possible. However, remember that is not the primary purpose of a halfway house. Living there means that you can reintegrate back into some of your regular, healthy routines from home but that you still also need the resources available. Take advantage of the programs that the halfway house has to offer because you will not necessarily have access to them forever.
Limit Visits
Seeing your relatives and friends is often relieving; however, doing so too frequently means that you are taking your attention away from yourself. Remember that the ultimate goal here is to go back to them. Right now, you need to work on the strategies for doing so.
Your time at a halfway house has a tremendous amount of benefits to offer to you. Take the steps necessary to use those benefits to your fullest potential.