5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Moving Out of Sober Living
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Leaving sober living can be a big change and really hard to adjust to. You usually don’t realize it until after you leave, but there are certain things I wish I knew before I moved out of a halfway house. I made a list of 5 things I wish I knew before moving out of sober living based on my own experiences.
5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Moving Out of Sober Living….
1. It can feel lonely at first because you don’t have a bunch of people around all the time.
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When you’re in halfway, there are always people around and you have a ton of supports. At pretty much any time if you are feeling down or need someone to talk to, there is someone there to stay up at night with you and talk with you about whatever you’re going through. After you leave sober living it can be difficult to get used to not having a bunch of people around all the time to talk to.
2. Having to worry about paying my own bills can be exhausting and difficult.
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This one was something I didn’t really consider at all when I was in halfway. Yes, halfway wasn’t cheap and did involve paying bills but it was a certain amount every week and I wasn’t in control of each bill specifically. I can’t tell you how many times our power got shut off or the cable guy came to take our cable boxes because we forgot to pay the bills on time. It’s a lot more responsibility to be in charge of your own bills.
3. Learning to budget and save my money.
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I still have trouble with this one today. Learning how to budget and save money is something that would have been so beneficial if I learned it in halfway. Being able to divide my money up and put it towards certain bills and just learning how to save it at all would have helped me be a lot less stressed.
4. It’s actually nice to be held accountable with things like drug tests, cleaning the house and curfew.
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It may sound crazy to some people, but being held accountable when I was in a halfway house was actually somewhat nice. It was good for me to have someone watching over me and drug testing me, making sure I clean up after myself and get home by curfew. It really taught me how to be accountable for my own actions and I wish I would have listened and learned more from it than I ultimately did.
5. You should find meetings that work for you and be prepared to not always have someone to go with you to a meeting.
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You have to come to the realization that sometimes you will have to go to a meeting alone. Once you are in your own place and doing your own thing, you won’t always have friends to go with you to meetings like you did in halfway. You should definitely find meetings that work with you and your schedule while you’re still in sober living.
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