Many alcoholics and addicts finally surrender and go get treatment — at Bradford, at Cumberland Heights, at Meharry and other places around town – and then what?
Lots of folks in early recovery go to sober living houses, sometimes (mistakenly) called halfway houses. They are houses where recovery people (of the same gender) lean on each other, and a paid manager runs the place, enforces curfews, does drug testing of the residents.
But what if there were no house manager? What if the inmates ran the asylum?
That’s actually the slogan of the Oxford House program, which has operated homes for men in Nashville since the early 1990s.And Oxford House just opened a house for women in recovery, with plans to open even more soon.
The idea is that the recovering addicts – within some guidelines – operate things themselves. Oxford House helps find landlords and get long-term leases, but the residents themselves sign those leases.
And then, the guys make sure rent is paid, bills are paid, maintenance is done. And they create their own rules about curfews, lights out, chores, sharing appliances and bathrooms, landline etiquette, smoking, the whole nine.
Rent is between $85 and $110 a week, and houses eventually can run several thousand bucks in the black. And residents decide what to do with that money, anything from spending it on seeding a new house to buying a hot tub.
There are three absolutes –
If you use drugs and/or alcohol, you’re out, within 15 minutes. You must pay your bills on time (you get a little longer to work out that infraction), and you have to follow behavior guidelines. Otherwise, you’re put on a modification plan, and if you violate that, you’re out.
And all those things can and do happen. And sometimes – sometimes – the houses don’t exactly look inside like you might want your house to look. But often times, the homes are really healthy places where addicts and alcoholics smoothly transition from treatment to long-term recovery.
The state loves the Oxford House program, so much that the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse has signed a contract to help with seed money to create more houses. And that includes in Nashville.
For info, contact Whitney Malone, herself an Oxford House alum, atwhitney.malone@oxfordhouse.org
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