‘Longer stays result in better long-term outcomes for sobriety,’ says Boca Recovery Center’s Christopher Ferry

Few need to be told how difficult it can be to get sober. Addiction grips all aspects of the addict’s life, squeezing relationships with friends and family, careers, passions and, ultimately, lives. For addicts and their families, getting sober can feel impossible.

Christopher Ferry knows this daunting feeling. He also knows that, despite that feeling, it’s not impossible to get sober. The founder of Boca Recovery Center was himself strongly addicted at one point. And it wasn’t all that long ago, 2013, that he got clean.

In his time at Boca, Ferry has also seen short stays and long. And among his many observations is that those who stay at the recovery center longer are more likely to hang onto their sobriety in the long term.

“Recovery is a challenge,” Ferry says. “And in the context of a stay at any recovery center, it can feel like once you’ve gotten the drugs or alcohol out of your system, you’ve got it all under control.”

According to Ferry though, this undeniably healthy feeling of newly found freedom can nonetheless be deceptive. Recovery and rehabilitation centers are controlled environments. The world isn’t as controlled. In fact, it’s very much uncontrolled. It’s unpredictable. And it’s not uncommon for the stresses of daily life to push recoverees into relapse.

“This initial sense of freedom is positive of course,” says Ferry. “But it’s just the first step. It’s the opening. The chance to really get to the root of things and ask questions about your addiction you never would have asked otherwise.”

Ferry’s Boca Recovery Center is, according to him, about this long-term, whole human approach to treatment. It’s an approach that demands people give themselves the time and space to search and let themselves become whole again. And like all things human, it is not something that can be rushed.