About this Sober House
Auburn is a men's recovery residence on Highland Avenue in Auburn, Maine, in Androscoggin County. It is the house Recovery Housing of Maine publishes as its halfway-home address, at 64 Highland Avenue.
Who the House Is For
The program here is set up for men transitioning from long-term substance use rehabilitation and from incarceration. The operator writes about returning citizens in plain terms: by staying at a halfway home for returning citizens, it says, a person will have an easier time adjusting.
Both of those groups arrive with the same underlying problem. They are coming out of an environment that decided almost everything for them, on a schedule set by someone else, and returning to a world where nothing is decided and, often, where the address they used to live at is not an option. A house that is expecting them, that has terms, and that does not hand them a move-out date on arrival covers exactly that gap.
How a Stay at Highland Avenue Works
The stay is phased rather than fixed. Residents typically begin in the more structured house and, after about two months, move on to a smaller, less restricted home. There is no time frame for moving out, and the operator is explicit that a resident can stay until they are ready to leave.
That matters more than it might sound. A great deal of recovery housing runs on a fixed term, which means the clock and the person are on different schedules: someone doing well is pushed out because ninety days elapsed, and someone struggling is pushed out for the same reason. A phased model with an open end date lets the amount of structure follow the person rather than the calendar.
Support Available to Residents
Residents have access to a defined set of supports:
- Mentoring
- Regular meetings
- Community involvement
- Activities
- Team support
This is peer support rather than clinical service. Nobody here is providing therapy or medical care; what the house provides is people who have done it, a routine, and something to be part of. For someone who has just finished a long clinical program, that shift is the point. The clinical work has largely been done. What is missing is a functioning daily life, and that is built out of mentoring, showing up to things and being useful to other people. It is also why the operator pairs the housing with recovery coaching and self-help trainings rather than leaving the house to carry everything on its own.
Sober Living in Auburn and Androscoggin County
Auburn sits directly across from Lewiston, and the two cities function as one community in Androscoggin County. The operator runs houses in both, which means a resident stepping down from the more structured house to a less restricted one is not leaving the area, changing job or losing whatever local support they have started to build.
Androscoggin County is one of the parts of Maine where the need for recovery housing has been most acute, and where people looking for a substance-free place to live have often had to consider moving south to find one. A house here, run alongside others in the same two cities, means that is not the only option. The operator frames its whole purpose as bridging the gap between rehab and home, and a house in the middle of Auburn is a literal expression of that: close enough to ordinary life to practice it, structured enough that practicing it is survivable.
For anyone searching for a men's halfway home in Auburn, sober living in Androscoggin County, or recovery housing between Auburn and Lewiston, this is the Highland Avenue house of Recovery Housing of Maine.
