Mark J. Terrill/AP
Treatment of substance abuse shouldn’t be trivialized, the founder of Phoenix House writes.
Fun as it was, The New Yorker's profile of Wonderland, the high-priced Hollywood drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, left me cold. Loaded with juicy details (grilled lobster tail with garlic butter, two pools, staff yoga instructor) and larded with names like a Liz Smith wannabe (Lohan, Tyson, Downey, Affleck, Sheen, Spears), the article shed little light on the dilemma of addiction and tended to trivialize the very serious business of substance abuse treatment.
As founder of Phoenix House, with close to half a century of helping people recover from drug and alcohol abuse, I was saddened to see treatment handled with the snickering schadenfreude reserved for the coverage of troubled celebrities. How we love to see the high and mighty brought low.
For the rich and famous, a luxurious setting is no bar to the kind of honesty and self-discovery that leads to recovery.
Substance abuse is real. It wrecks families, destroys careers, and is truly life-threatening. Although "cure" is an illusion, recovery is a reality. It is achievable and manageable, but you've got to work at it-and you've got to start somewhere.
Treatment at Phoenix House, where Wonderland's executive director overcame addiction, is among the best in the nation. But while the standard of care is the highest, most of our residential facilities are strictly no-frills. Food is wholesome but plain, dormitory accommodations are the rule for most new arrivals, and everyone in the community—and it is a community—gets a work assignment.
At high-end treatment facilities for fee-paying clients, life may be more comfortable, and accommodations less spartan, but treatment itself need not necessarily be any less effective. Open and frank disclosure within the therapy groups are the mainstay of effective treatment and make possible the kind of self-discovery that leads to recovery. For the rich and famous, a luxurious setting is no bar to this kind of honest disclosure and self-discovery.
Will treatment "take" after a one-week stay? Not likely. Nor will 28 days or 12 months be long enough. Recovery does not sustain itself without support, and a trenchant point made by the New Yorker article was Wonderland's executive director's own continued involvement in AA, more than two decades after completing treatment at Phoenix House.
Are high-end, lap-of-luxury resorts the best places to overcome addiction? Probably not for most of the folks whose misuse of drugs or alcohol is compromising their lives. But if there's one thing we've learned over the past half-century, it is that treatment is very much a matter of "different strokes for different folks." We've also learned that treatment works-but only if we keep working at it.
Mitchell S. Rosenthal, M.D., started building the Phoenix House system of treatment programs in 1967 as deputy commissioner for rehabilitation of New York City’s Addiction Services Agency. Dr. Rosenthal earlier established the armed service’s first therapeutic community for the treatment of alcoholism, drug addiction, and character disorders at the Oakland Naval Hospital.
John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Previously, he served as Chief Speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
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Mitchell S. Rosenthal, M.D., started building the Phoenix House system of treatment programs in 1967 as deputy commissioner for rehabilitation of New York City’s Addiction Services Agency. Dr. Rosenthal earlier established the armed services’ first therapeutic community for the treatment of alcoholism, drug addiction, and character disorders at the Oakland Naval Hospital.
The best treatment programs are free or very low cost. I have been in several from California to Colorado. Recovery from heavy addiction is one the toughest things on earth. I have found that open ended in house programs are best for me. 28 day-$28,000. are generally insurance scams paid by employers who are at the end of their ropes,so to speak. 5 years sober
The treatment facility that gave me my chance to turn my life around cost $3,500 for a one-month stay. Each person had their own small, yet neatly furnished room. Meals were simple, but prepared with care. Besides the new-ish, comfortable furniture, there were no other amenities. No professional counselors or medical staff, no massage therapists, no leaving the grounds to take care of personal or business tasks (with the exceptions of pressing health-care or legal obligations). No television, no unsupervised visits, & no cell-phones. Just a clean, safe place with a lot of rules & structure. My 30-day stay was followed by over a year in a very frustrating & often dysfunctional "sober-house", which is a story unto itself... Close to four years on, I'm still grateful for both experiences & happy in my sobriety.
It worked for me, but even in a setting that (compared to the sorts of places described in recent articles) was downright spartan, there were many people who didn't "get it".
They didn't get it because their experience had shown them that either their own money, or their families' money, would get them off the hook every time. Without the very real risk of serious consequences, be they incarceration or death, true change rarely occurs.
For those of us who find ourselves in this sort of situation & know it's our only shot, that if we blow it no one will be able to swoop in to rescue us, treatment stands a much better chance of having the desired effect. Humans, & especially addicts, learn through pain. Breaking addiction depends on transforming arrogance into quiet pride, & humiliating shame into simple humility. Reading about these resort-style recovery facilities & the near-celebrity-status Recovery Industry types that run them saddens me. We addicts will continue to engage in unhealthy behaviors, be they expressed through drug abuse or self-promoting television appearances, until the only choice left is between simple survival & death.
I strongly suspect that lobster tails, equine therapy & the comfortable presence of only the wealthiest of their peers do little to bring that stark contrast to these clients' awareness's.
But, hey, "whatever works", right?
snooze.
Thank you.
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