About this Recovery Home
The Twelve Step House in Chicago, Illinois is a sober living home for men in Cook County, at a North Damen Avenue address in the Ravenswood and Lincoln Square area of the city's North Side.
Established in Chicago in 1958
The Twelve Step House was established in 1958 as a residence for men, and men in recovery from alcoholism are the population it serves. The house publishes that founding year itself, which gives a family or a discharge planner a fixed point to start from rather than an impression formed from a listing.
A Residence for Men and a Meeting Place
The Twelve Step House is a residence for men and a meeting place for any and all alcoholics. Meetings held at the house bring the wider fellowship through the door, so a resident finds the recovery community he needs in the building where he lives. In the first weeks after treatment the hardest part of keeping a meeting schedule is often getting to the room, and here the room is in the house. Because those meetings are open to anyone, the men a resident sits with are not only his housemates, which keeps his recovery from shrinking to the size of the household.
Recovery Built on the Principles of Alcoholics Anonymous
The Twelve Step House bases recovery on AA principles. For a man comparing sober living options in Chicago, that settles what the household is organized around: the steps, and the men working them alongside him. It also fixes the common language of the house, so someone arriving from a program built on the same framework does not have to translate where he stands for the people he now lives with.
Supported Without Government Aid
The Twelve Step House has not received government aid and exists solely through its own contributions. A sober house funded that way answers to the community that supports it rather than to a public contract, and the house states that position plainly. For a resident, the practical effect is that his place in the household does not depend on a grant cycle or on eligibility rules written by an outside agency.
Damen Avenue and the North Side Grid
North Damen Avenue is one of the continuous north-south streets that run the length of Chicago's North Side, and The Twelve Step House stands on it. Ravenswood and Lincoln Square are adjoining North Side community areas, and CTA Brown Line rail service reaches Damen Avenue in Lincoln Square. A man without a car can get from this address to a job, a court date or an outside meeting anywhere in the city, which is the difference between a schedule he can keep and one he cannot.
Sober Living in Ravenswood and Lincoln Square
Chicago is the seat of Cook County, and this sober house sits inside it on the North Side. Anyone weighing Cook County recovery housing can take questions about current openings and house expectations to The Twelve Step House directly.
ABOUT US
The Twelve Step House was conceived as a means of helping these sober alcoholics practice the A.A program. In this program, each person is charged with the responsibility of “carrying the message†that is, helping someone else who has a drinking problem.
Daily communication and counseling his A.A. sponsor still remains the chief support the new man will receive while in the House. However, should additional counseling and explanations be necessary, the House Custodian and Board Members assigned as House Sponsors will make every effort to aid the new man, without conflicting in any way with the efforts of the A.A. sponsor.
Living in a sheltered atmosphere, surrounded by other men like himself who are trying to rehabilitate themselves, has proven to be a prime factor in the new man's early struggle for sobriety.
