“[He had] supplanted the notion of a Higher Power with something far more personally empowering: sophisticated self-awareness.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Dominic’s family lost close to $200,000—their total retirement savings—on this string of ineffectual programs.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Rehab owns a special place in the American imagination. Our nation invented the “Cadillac” rehab, manifested in such widely celebrated brand names as Hazelden, Sierra Tucson, and the Betty Ford Center. Ask the average American about any of these institutions and you will likely hear a response tinged with reverence—these are the standard-bearers, our front line against addiction. The fact that they are all extraordinarily expensive is almost beside the point: these rehabs are fighting the good fight, and they deserve every penny we’ve got. Unfortunately, nearly all these programs use an adaptation of the same AA approach that has been shown repeatedly to be highly ineffective.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Many top rehab programs include extra features such as horseback riding, Reiki massage, and “adventure therapy” to help their clients exorcise the demons of addiction. Some renowned programs even have “equine therapists” available to treat addiction—a fairly novel credential in this context, to put it kindly. Sadly, there is no evidence that these additional “treatments” serve any purpose other than to provide momentary comfort to their clientele—and cover for the programs' astronomical fees, which can exceed $90,000 a month.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Why do we tolerate this industry? One reason may sound familiar: in rehab, one feels that one is doing something, taking on a life-changing intervention whose exorbitant expense ironically reinforces the impression that epochal changes must be just around the corner. It is marketed as the sort of cleansing experience that can herald the dawn of a new era. How many of us have not indulged this fantasy at one time or another—the daydream that if we could just put our lives “on pause” for a while and retreat somewhere pastoral and lovely, we could finally make sense of all our problems? Alas, the effect is temporary at best. Many patients begin using again soon after they emerge from rehab, often suffering repeated relapses. The discouragement that follows these failures can magnify the desperation that originally brought them to help’s door. What’s especially shocking is how the rehab industry responds to these individuals: they simply repeat their failed treatments, sometimes dozens of times. Repeat stays in rehab are very common, and readmission is almost always granted without any special consideration or review. On second and subsequent stays, the same program is offered, including lectures previously attended.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“Any serious treatment center would study its own outcomes to modify and improve its approach. But rehabs generally don’t do this. For example, only one of the three best-known facilities has ever published outcome studies (Hazelden); neither Betty Ford nor Sierra Tucson has checked to see if their treatment is producing any results for at least the past decade. Hazelden’s follow-up studies looked at just the first year following discharge and showed disappointing results, as we will see later. Efforts by journalists to solicit data from rehabs have also been met with resistance, making an independent audit of their results almost impossible and leading to the inevitable conclusion that the rest of the programs either don't study their own outcomes or refuse to publish what they find.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“[The inebriate hospitals]’ philosophy, not so different from today’s rehabilitation facilities, was that people could detoxify, heal, and eventually flourish if they were deprived of any alcohol for a period of time, often up to one year. But the inebriate hospitals were somewhat different from today’s palatial rehabs in one important way: patients were often subjected to cold showers and typically housed alongside society’s cast-offs—the blind, those suffering from syphilis, the mentally ill, orphans, even prisoners.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“The inebriate hospitals also adopted another new procedure for alcoholism: prefrontal lobotomy. This, painfully, failed to cure the “disease” of alcoholism, with one account famously relating that, “[f]ollowing the procedure, the patient dressed and, pulling a hat down over his bandaged head, slipped out of the hospital in search of a drink.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“At the threshold of AA’s invention, America carried a population of alcoholics deeply fatigued by many decades of barbaric treatment, imprisonment, and isolation; rattled by errant snake oil “cures”; and suffused with a widespread sense of hopelessness. Bill Wilson was just such an alcoholic.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
“As his biographer put it, “[Bill Wilson] was compulsive, given to emotional extremes. . . . Even after he stopped drinking, he was still a heavy consumer of cigarettes and coffee. He had a sweet tooth, a large appetite for sex, and a major enthusiasm for LSD and, later, for niacin, a B-complex vitamin.” Indeed, he was such a heavy smoker that the effects of tobacco would rob him of his mobility and, eventually, his life. One account recalls that he continued to smoke even in his old age when he needed frequent doses of oxygen just to make it through the day. Friends who arrived at the house reported seeing him struggling to decide whether he should take oxygen or smoke another cigarette. The cigarette won every time. A similar pattern arose around a different behavior: serial adultery. Wilson’s need to sleep with women outside his marriage was legendary—so much so that AA members eventually put together a “Founder’s Watch” committee designed to steer him away from any tempting young women at the numerous events he attended.”
Source: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry