Rehabilitating Rehab
“Addiction treatment is difficult work, but it can succeed, and evidence-based care does exist. For opioid addiction in particular, studies show medications like methadone and buprenorphine cut the death rate among patients by half or more. But the parents I spoke to have learned — as thousands of Americans discover each year — that much of the US rehab industry does not provide evidence-based, effective care.” Vox: She spent more than $110,000 on drug rehab. Her son still died.
+ The opiate problem feels like something new. But it has been a part of the American experience since the beginning. “The first opiates probably came to America in 1620, arriving in the trunk of the doctor who had sailed on the Mayflower. Opium was still in use during the Colonial Era. Thomas Jefferson, for example, relied on opiates to ease his suffering in his final years. (Ever far-sighted, he planted opium poppies on his property. They continued growing at Monticello until the 1990s, when the Drug Enforcement Agency pulled them up.)” The Saturday Evening Post: America’s First Opioid Epidemic.