Residential addiction treatment for Miami families.

For Miami residents, the 50-mile drive up I-95 to Delray Beach is part of what makes residential treatment work — distance from the using network in Brickell, Wynwood, or Coconut Grove is clinically meaningful in early recovery. RECO runs six real residences in Delray Beach and keeps the same primary therapist through residential, PHP, and IOP rather than handing clients off across providers.

From Brickell, Coral Gables, or Coconut Grove, the drive north to RECO’s Delray Beach campus runs roughly 50 miles up I-95 — about 65 minutes outside rush hour, longer when the morning crawl from Aventura backs up past Hallandale. That distance matters clinically. For most Miami residents entering residential treatment, the geographic separation from the bars in Brickell, the social circuit around Wynwood, and the dealers and using friends woven through daily life isn’t a logistical inconvenience — it’s part of the treatment. Daily commuting from Pinecrest or Coral Gables isn’t viable at the residential level of care anyway. Clients live on-site at RECO’s residences in Delray Beach for the 30 to 60 days they’re in residential, then continue on into PHP and IOP from the same campus.

Residential treatment is the most structured level of care RECO offers. It’s designed for the earliest phase of recovery — the window after acute withdrawal has resolved but before early-recovery skills are reliable enough to hold up against unstructured life. This page is about when that level of care is clinically indicated, what the days actually look like, and how Miami families coordinate admission from 50 miles away.

When residential is the clinical indication

Residential isn’t the default starting point for everyone. It’s the right level of care when 24-hour staffed structure is genuinely needed — when the home environment in Brickell or Aventura isn’t safe or stable for early recovery, when previous outpatient attempts haven’t held, when co-occurring psychiatric conditions need close monitoring, or when the using network is so embedded in daily life that staying local would mean staying triggered. The decision is guided by the ASAM placement criteria, which assess six clinical dimensions: acute intoxication and withdrawal potential, biomedical conditions, emotional and cognitive conditions, readiness to change, relapse potential, and recovery environment.

A Coral Gables professional whose drinking has escalated through three failed IOP attempts is a different clinical picture than someone presenting for first treatment with strong family support and a stable home. The first profile typically meets ASAM criteria for residential; the second may do well in PHP from the start. We do a full clinical assessment before recommending a level of care, and we’ll tell families directly if residential isn’t what their loved one needs. Over-treatment is its own harm.

What 30 to 60 days of residential actually covers

The length of stay in residential is clinically driven, not insurance-driven. Most clients are with us for 30 to 60 days. The first week is largely about stabilization — sleep, nutrition, settling the nervous system after months or years of chemical dysregulation. By the second week, the core clinical work is underway: daily group therapy using CBT and DBT frameworks, individual therapy two to three times per week, psychiatry as needed for medication management, and family work that often includes scheduled phone or video sessions with relatives in Miami.

Medication-assisted treatment is integrated when appropriate. For alcohol use disorder, that may mean naltrexone or acamprosate; for opioid use disorder, buprenorphine or extended-release Vivitrol injections. MAT decisions are made between the client and the psychiatrist based on the specific clinical picture, not on ideology. Trauma-focused work — EMDR, Trauma-Focused CBT, and motivational interviewing where ambivalence is still present — typically enters the treatment plan once initial stabilization is solid. Group programming covers relapse prevention, family systems, grief, the neuroscience of addiction, and the practical rebuilding of daily rhythms — wake-time, meals, exercise, sleep hygiene — that active addiction systematically destroys. More on the clinical model is on the residential care overview page.

The step-down to PHP and IOP

Residential is the first phase, not the whole arc. Most clients step down to partial hospitalization (PHP) for roughly four to six weeks once they’ve completed residential. PHP runs five to six clinical hours per day, five days a week, with clients living in our sober-living residences rather than the staffed residential houses. After PHP, clients typically step down again to intensive outpatient (IOP) for eight to twelve weeks at nine clinical hours per week, then into aftercare and alumni programming.

The clinical continuity matters. The primary therapist and case manager who carry a client through residential continue with them into PHP and into IOP. There’s no hand-off across unrelated providers, no retelling the trauma history to a new clinician at every level transition. For Miami families, this also means a single point of contact for the full 90 to 120 days of treatment rather than navigating three different programs.

Real residences, not warehoused beds

RECO operates six properties across Delray Beach for residential and sober-living clients. They’re real houses on quiet streets — not converted motels, not institutional facilities. We hold them to the standard we’d want for our own family if a sibling or child were in early recovery. House managers are addiction-recovery trained, on-site, and accountable. Daily routines — community meals, chores, meeting attendance, scheduled clinical hours, lights-out times — are clinical interventions, not arbitrary rules.

This matters because the residential environment is part of the treatment, not just housing attached to it. A client who spends 30 days in a chaotic, poorly supervised residential setting and 30 days in clinical sessions has not had 30 days of residential treatment. They’ve had 30 days of fragmented care. The integration of clinical programming and lived environment is what makes residential work.

Starting from Miami: insurance, transportation, family logistics

Most Miami clients come to us through a verification call to our admissions team. We work with the major commercial carriers serving South Florida — Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, and others — and can typically verify benefits and confirm authorization within the same day. Details on the verification process are on our insurance page. We’re an in-network or out-of-network option depending on the specific plan; the verification call will tell you which, what the deductible and coinsurance look like, and what authorization will be required for the residential level of care.

Transportation from Miami is straightforward. Many clients drive up with a family member; others fly into Palm Beach International (PBI), about 25 minutes from our campus, or Fort Lauderdale (FLL), about 40 minutes. We can coordinate airport pickup as part of admission. Once a client is in residential, family from Brickell, Coral Gables, or Pinecrest can visit on weekends per the clinical schedule, and weekly family therapy sessions happen by video for relatives who can’t make the drive every week. For alcohol-specific or opioid-specific clinical detail, see our pages on alcohol addiction treatment and heroin and opioid treatment.

Serving residents of: Brickell, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Aventura, Pinecrest.