I've been in residential settings twice. Once in a treatment centre for rehab for a month, and once in a psychiatric hospital for 8 weeks.

The rehab place was an ok to not great experience. They didn't have much experience dealing with mental illness on top of addiction so I really clashed with the staff. The facility itself was great and the treatment program was, objectively, good - it just wasn't a good fit for me.

The psych hospital was really good. I was absolutely terrified going in, I was in really bad shape and everyone was telling me I needed to be iP. the thing that reassured me, was that my pdoc told me that because I was going in voluntarily I could leave whenever I wanted, and that it would be up to her and me to decide when I was ready to finish treatment and be discharged.

There was about 3 hours of group therapy every day plus I saw my pdoc every day. I also was able to get passes to leave to go see my T whose office was just down the street. We had optional exercise sessions where we went to a gym, escorted 3 times a week. The food was pretty good. The nurses were all amazing. The way it worked was you were assigned a primary nurse who was in charge of your meds, and you could talk to her whenever you needed to. My nurse was great. She new I was struggling with addiction to, so she found all kinds of extra stuff on addiction for me to work on, even though that wasn't what I was in for.

We had 2 lounges with TV's and an arts and craft room, and a computer with internet that we could use.

The hospital had a ranking system for patients in terms of privledges to leave the ward, from not at all to whenever you felt like it. Because I was voluntary and considered low risk for suicide, I could leave the ward whenever I wanted, unless I was supposed to be in group, for up to an hour at a time, so I was able to go out for coffee or a walk.

they even gave me special passes to go out at night so that I could go to AA meetings in the area.

The only 2 downsides in my opinion were (a) being constantly monitored - the nurses checked on you at least once an hour and (b) the relative lack or privacy - none of the doors had locks on them - not even the bathroom stalls. Also the staff took notes on everything and then updated each other. So for example when i came back from an AA meeting they'd ask me how it was and we'd talk about it. Then the next morning my day nurse would start the morning with I understand you had a good / bad experience at AA last night do you want to talk about it. It all felt kind of big brotherish.

But I can honestly say that the experience saved my life, and if I needed to go IP again, I would.

--splitimage