Every sober living rulebook is answering one question: how does a house full of people in early recovery stay safe for all of them at once? Read the rules that way and they stop looking like discipline and start looking like architecture.
Why the rules exist
Early recovery is an environment problem as much as a willpower problem. Unstructured time, unverified stories, and unaccountable nights are where relapse lives. The rules exist to make the healthy default automatic — and to make the house trustworthy enough that everyone in it can actually relax.
Random screening isn’t suspicion. It’s the reason everyone sleeps soundly in a house of strangers.
The core rules, house by house
- Substance-free, absolutely. No alcohol, no non-prescribed drugs, anywhere, ever. This is the rule that makes all others possible.
- Random screening. Urine or breath tests, unannounced. Refusal usually counts as a positive.
- Curfew. Commonly 10–11 pm weeknights, midnight weekends, with documented flexibility for work shifts.
- Meeting minimums. Three recovery meetings a week is the common floor — AA, NA, SMART, or similar, often verified with signatures or check-ins.
- Work or purpose. Employment, school, or treatment enrollment within 30 days.
- Chores. A rotation, posted, checked. Shared spaces stay clean because everyone owns them.
- House meeting. Weekly, attendance required — logistics, disputes, and who needs backup this week.
- Guest policy. Visitors in common areas during set hours. Overnight guests, almost never.
- Medication disclosure. Everything on the table at intake, stored securely.
What happens when rules break
Good houses distinguish between friction (missed chore, blown curfew) and safety (substance use in or out of the house). Friction earns consequences inside the program — earlier curfew, extra responsibilities, a direct conversation. Safety violations trigger the relapse protocol: sometimes a higher level of care, sometimes a required restart elsewhere, always a fast, honest response. Ask any house you call to walk you through both paths; the quality of the answer tells you everything.
Red flags: too few, too many
Too few: no screening, no curfew, no manager on site, “rules” that fit in a text message. That’s a rooming house with recovery branding — and one using resident away from being unsafe for everyone.
Too many: confiscated phones, no work allowed, fees for everything, curfews that make employment impossible. Structure serves the life you’re building; theatrics serve the operator.
How DB House runs it
Our rulebook is two pages: substance-free with random screening, 11 pm weeknight curfew (flexes for documented shifts), three verified meetings a week, work or enrollment within 30 days, weekly house meeting, chores, guests in common areas during visiting hours. We read it together at intake — the house page has the summary.
