Oxford House Research Paper

Review of Oxford House
An Oxford house is a house that provides a clean and sober living environment for men and women who are recovering from active drug and alcohol addiction and is any house which falls under the Oxford House model, conceived in 1975 by Paul Molloy, a former senate committee staff member and recovering alcoholic. An Oxford house provides a group living environment and an effective means of keeping people clean and sober.
Statistics show that when a person is in early recovery it is important for that person to have access to an environment that is conducive to maintaining complete and total abstinence from drugs and/or alcohol. An Oxford House somewhat guarantees this based on its purpose and how it is run.
There
are three primary rules governing each Oxford House and violation of any of the three rules can result in immediate termination of the offending house member’s residence. The three rules are: 1) Do no use drugs or alcohol or partake in disruptive behavior 2) The House must be run democratically. Every member has an equal voice in all decisions on house matters. 3) Pay your Equal Expense Shared (or EES) and all fines.
An Oxford House provides many benefits to the recovering alcoholic or addict. It provides structure and allows members to learn how to be accountable and responsible to each other and to their communities and reintroduces its members to practicing essential life skills.
Each house is run in much the same way that a normal house or residence is run, which contributes to its effectiveness.
House finances are maintained, bills are paid in a timely manner, the house is kept clean by way of weekly house chores assigned to each house member, the property is kept clean and maintained and every effort is made to create and maintain a good relationship with neighbors and the community. This last is particularly important because many people can be apprehensive about having a group home filled with recovering alcoholics and addicts in their midst so a good relationship with neighbors is a
must.
These things teach the Oxford House members the concept of maintaining responsible, productive lifestyles; many members, having spent many years lying, cheating and stealing as well as violating the law in order to obtain drugs or alcohol are not practiced in these life skills.
There are a few potential drawbacks or disadvantages to living in an Oxford House.
The average tenure of an Oxford House member is approximately six months. A person must first be adaptable to a group living environment but must also be adaptable to the fairly rapid rollover of house members. When a member leaves the house it means that the other house members must first adjust to that person no longer living there and then adjust to the incoming member who takes the departing member’s place. Many conflicts between house members can also arise which is the norm in any group living environment. Some of these conflicts are resolvable while others are not. Since the house must be democratically run, important decisions pertaining to the house are made by a majority vote. So if a member is in the minority and in disagreement with the decision, it can create problems or inconveniences for the dissenting house member. For example, when a house decides by majority vote to move the mandatory weekly house business meeting from Monday to Saturday, it could create scheduling conflicts for some house members. If a member plays in a softball league that has scheduled games every Saturday then the member might be required to quit the softball team in order to be able to make the weekly house meeting. Finding solutions facing a house that works for all house members can often be difficult or even
impossible.
Oftentimes, a long-tenured house member can provide some stability to the house. Although all houses are democratically run it can be important and very beneficial to the house to have a strong core group of members with tenure and with more experience in recovery to be a guide to the newcomers. When a long-tenured member leaves it can potentially have a destabilizing effect on the house. Although it doesn’t happen often, there have been times when an Oxford House experiences systematic failure if there’s a consistent string of tenured, stabilizing members leaving followed by a string of incoming members who are not interested in recovery or changing their lives. Old behaviors acquired from years of addiction can creep back in and in worst case scenarios the house can fall apart, the house’s Oxford charter can be revoked and so on. There was a situation involving an Oxford House in Washington state recently in which the members fell months behind on paying the rent, the back yard was occupied by a stolen car and the members were selling stolen goods on Craigslist. The local Oxford chapter was forced to shut the house down.
That is actually a rare and extreme example of what can potentially happen when an Oxford house is allowed to slide out of control. Overall it is a very successful and effective community-based approach to keeping people clean and sober. Statistics show that it works. On average, the percentage of Oxford house members who have successfully maintained sobriety for a minimum of one year is about 75%. Depaul University’s Center for Community Research has been studying Oxford House since 1988 and has concluded that the statistics suggest the Oxford House model is more effective in empowering its members to maintain abstinence from drugs and alcohol more effectively in comparison to those who solely attend twelve step programs and does more to enhance the perception of members having control of their lives.