In Rehab: An American Scandal, journalist Shoshana Walter provides an in-depth, gripping, and often shocking report on the state of the billion-dollar addiction-treatment business in the United States through the personal stories of four individuals who have been through it.
These include Chris Koon, a young white man from Louisiana who opted to attend Cenikor, a treatment center, instead of serving time in a state prison, only to find himself bound by forced labor and punitive rules; April Lee, a Black woman from Pennsylvania, who struggled to overcome a heroin addiction that robbed her of her children and her home; Larry Ley, a doctor and recovering alcoholic in Indiana who opened a practice prescribing Suboxone, an effective medical treatment for opioid addiction; and Wendy McEntyre, a white woman from a wealthy California enclave whose son died at a sober-living facility.
Through these perspectives, Walter demonstrates how difficult it is to obtain and sustain treatment for addiction, and how racial disparities and political maneuvering make it nearly impossible for some to do so. What emerges as the biggest culprit is the motive for profit over lasting treatment. For example, prescribing rules make it easier for doctors to give patients addictive opiates than Suboxone, which remains scarce. Treatment centers bill insurance companies for the maximum amount and then boot patients from 28-day programs before they are ready to leave, putting them at high risk of relapse and overdose. Private treatment centers operate with little oversight, even when patients die. Walter's reporting is flawless and her writing is excellent. Rehab is an important look at an out-of-control industry in dire need of reform. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor