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the rehab scam -- John Oliver
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
Worth considering?
1
Comments
'The uploader has not made this video available in your country'. If I look for it on YouTube, it's one we have to pay for.
Synopsis, please...?
I find most of what John talks about to be well worth considering. Like John says the industry obviously needs more oversight and expertise and knowing about such problems helps us consumers make better decisions.
With changes (increases) to insurance coverage for rehab services, lots of poorly run centers based on unsubstantiated treatment methods are proliferating so lots of people who need effective help aren't getting it and some are dying because of it.
On May 10th, I celebrated twenty-six years clean and sober and during that time, I've come to view treatment facilities rather negatively. When I first cleaned up (the first time) it was 1978 and treatment centers were few and far between. In my area at the time, about half the folks who came to twelve step meetings ended up getting sober. Today that number is at about 2% and I think that's generous.
Because addiction treatment is such big business (35 billion dollars a year and growing), expanding markets are always sought after. The bar for 'addiction' has been lowered to a point that it is nearly meaningless in order to make as many people as possible a potential consumer. Found some pot in your sixteen year olds room? Better send him to rehab. Been taking painkillers for three months after your surgery and are suffering some minor withdrawal? That's because you're an addict and you need treatment. I find a couple of problems with this.
First, and most minor, lowering the bar has a similar effect of putting a young person in juvenile detention as a scare tactic. There he or she meets kids who really do need to be there and they get taught how to be better hoodlums. Likewise, someone who isn't an addict yet, or as the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book referred to them in 1936, "little more than a potential alcoholic" learns how to beat the system for longer.
Second, the Big Book's advice to those aforementioned folks was to finish drinking first. Go out there and try some controlled drinking, it suggests. We talk about desperation being a key to success, so much so that it is referred to as 'the gift of desperation'. Treatment centers took that away. Things getting a bit dicey at home or work? No problem, just check into a treatment center to get the family or boss off your back, dry out or clean up and recover some health. When you get out you can probably maintain sobriety for a little bit - long enough for you to buy yourself some good-will and trust at home and work, catch up financially a bit, maybe even put some money in the bank.
And six months or a year from now you can go right back to drinking or doing drugs. It'll probably be a few months till your caught, you can lie your way out of trouble for a few more. When everyone in your life gets to the last straw you just admit you have a problem, head off for rehab and do another reset. The way things are set up now, many people are drinking or doing drugs for a couple of years, clean up for a year, back to using for a couple of years, etc., thereby extending addiction throughout their entire life - fifty or sixty years or more.
Once, a person would hit bottom and have a real chance to get clean and sober. Ten, fifteen or twenty years with no vacations or resets, completely out of second chances, they get to the last house on the block and try like their life depended on it - because it did. Now they get to choose an arbitrary bottom - not when their life is on the line, but when they need a rest. I truly believe that rehab helps more people commit suicide on the installment plan than they help.
Well thought out , lived and informative. Thank you.
There's no money in cures.
There's a bottomless pit of incoming readies in treatment....
@federica -- @person pretty much nailed it.
PS. As an addendum, I am one of what I hope is a growing number of people who bridle every time they hear the phrase, "drugs and alcohol." Let's get this straight: Alcohol IS a drug, irrespective of its legality.
(The same can be said for most, if not all, Medically-based Charities, by the way. )
I don't think anyone really understands how to treat those suffering with addiction problems. Not really.
We've The Priory near where I live; it costs you £2000 a week to stay there. They give you a Big Book (A.A. literature) and the food's not very good.
Some stay sober, most others don't.
I think the difference between a good rehab and a bad one is that a good rehab will say "Once you leave here, you're not cured, you can never drink/drug again, and you should go to A.A.".
A friend of mine who is a moderate (ab)user of substances just took advantage of his insurance cover and did a three-month intensive inpatient stay at a rehab clinic, something he’d never have been able to afford on his normal income. It’s actually done him a lot of good to be confronted with all the things his using was causing in himself and others, so I’m glad the option was there for him.
But I do agree that some of the people I hear him talk about seem to be misusing the rehab system, he mentioned people dropping out of the program and others going to the park where it was easy to hook up with a dealer and ‘fellows’, which is what they call other abusers.
Yeah, I'm quite certain that increased coverage means that there are also more quality clinics with improved, innovative treatment methods.
I think it's sort of an inherent problem when acknowledging problems and trying to address them, that we can overlook the good that is also being done. Good point, bringing it up.
Yes.
Finally managed to view video.
There are far too many 'legally criminal' scams. Can we provide a better model? Integrity is part of sila. This for me is the value of the sangha. Not Saints but enacting a higher virtue and example. Refuge can aid rehab?
Hope this is helpful for those suffering with addiction
https://refugerecovery.org