The wrong way to rehabilitate a drug addict

Most drug rehab programs treat addiction as a disease and their patients as ill. The therapy reflects this premise with powerful psychiatric drugs given to replace the addict's drug of choice.

Psychiatric drugs have well known side effects, many harmful or potentially damaging. Yet there is scant evidence that these drugs cure the "disease" or prevent further outbreaks (think relapses) if the disease has been temporarily arrested during the course of therapy. Of a hundred patients treated at a typical drug rehab center, nearly eighty five will abuse drugs again.

There are two possible explanations. The drugs are ineffective or the disease model is incorrect. Either way, if someone you know needs drug rehab in Georgia, you should steer clear of the psychiatric programs which treat the addict as if he's ill. They're expensive and largely ineffective. At best, they impress upon an addict that there's something wrong with him and that drugs are the answer, an idea that is the root of his troubles.

Fritz Alders