Addicted To Rehab

After decades of the American “war on drugs” and relentless prison expansion, political officials are finally challenging mass incarceration. Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment. In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system—two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim’s book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.

An eye-opening tour of the addiction treatment industry explores the gap between what should happen and what does What happens inside drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and how rehab works are a mystery to those outside the industry – and sometimes even to those inside it. Anne M. Fletcher is a trusted New York Times bestselling health and medical writer who visited 15 addiction treatment centers—from outpatient programs for the indigent to famous celebrity rehabs; from the sites of renowned Twelve-Step centers to several unconventional programs—to find out what really happens. What she reveals ranges from inspirational to irresponsible, and, in some cases, potentially dangerous. Real Stories: As always with her books, Fletcher gets the inside story by turning to real people who “have been there,” interviewing more than 100 individuals whose compelling stories illustrate serious issues facing people in rehab and endemic in the rehab industry today. Connected Writer and Researcher who has earned the respect (and cooperation) of experts throughout the fields she’s taken on. Inside Rehab is no exception—Fletcher has interviewed more than 100 professionals working in the field, including a mix of rehab staffers and administrators as well as leading academics. Rehab is constantly covered in the media, as celebrities battle their drug and alcohol issues in the spotlight and reality TV puts recovery in prime time. Addiction is no longer only a personal struggle—it’s a pop culture phenomenon. Myth Busting: Fletcher exposes twelve supposed facts for the falsehoods they are, including “rehab is necessary for most people to recover from addictions;” “highly trained professionals provide most of the treatment in addiction programs;” and “drugs should not be used to treat a drug addict.” Fletcher’s most important finding is the alarming discrepancy between the treatments being employed at many rehab centers and the treatments recommended by leading experts and supported by scientific research. Guidance and Practical Solutions: Inside Rehab also highlights what is working, spotlights state-of-the-art programs and practices, and offers advice and guidance for people seeking quality care and treatment for themselves or those they care about. Inside Rehab is the first book to give readers a thoughtful, sensitive, and bracingly honest insider’s view of the drug and alcohol rehab industry in America. For people seeking quality care for themselves or a loved one, Inside Rehab is essential reading, offering a wealth of accurate information and wise guidance.

A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller For the first time, Nicole Curtis, the star of the megahit HGTV and DIY Network show Rehab Addict, reveals her private struggles, her personal victories, and the inspiring lessons we can all learn from them. Nicole Curtis is the tough, soulful, charismatic dynamo who for the past twenty years has worked tirelessly to restore historical houses, often revitalizing neighborhoods in the process. And also, in the process, drawing millions of fans to her television show, Rehab Addict, where they follow each step of the hard work and singular vision that transform the seemingly lost cause of a run-down building into a beautifully restored home. But there is so much more to this self-taught expert and working mom. With hersignature irresistible honesty and energy, Curtis writes about a project that every reader will find compelling: how she rehabbed herself. Better Than New reveals what’s not seen on TV—Curtis’s personal battles and her personal triumphs, her complicated relationships, her life as a single mother, the story of how she got started remodeling houses, and the consuming ins and outs of producing a megahit television show while keeping up with two kids, two rescue dogs, and countless tasks on her home renovation punch lists. Followers of the show will get an inside look at some of her most famous restorations, including the Dollar house, the Minnehaha house, the Campbell Street project, and the Ransom Gillis mansion. Part inspirational memoir and part self-help guide, Better Than New is a journey ineight chapters—each pinned to the story of a house that Curtis has remodeled, each delivering a hard-fought lesson about life—that takes readers to the place we all want to be: home.

Shavelson is a physician and journalist who followed five addicts through various drug rehabilitation programs in California. Their stories, often told in their own words and punctuated by bandw photos Shavelson took as the five traversed the system and the streets, highlight the links between drug addiction, mental illness, and trauma, including child abuse. Shavelson argues for an integrated approach to drug treatment that addresses the fundamental causes of drug abuse, not just its outward symptoms and behaviors. c. Book News Inc.

Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the “disease model” of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease, based on evidence that brains change with drug use. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it’s supposed to do—seek pleasure and relief—in a world that’s not cooperating. Brains are designed to restructure themselves with normal learning and development, but this process is accelerated in addiction when highly attractive rewards are pursued repeatedly. Lewis shows why treatment based on the disease model so often fails, and how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery, given the realities of brain plasticity. Combining intimate human stories with clearly rendered scientific explanation, The Biology of Desire is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.

The ultimate ‘what you need to know’ guide for navigating the confusing world of addiction treatment, insurance coverage, and recovery. Imagine you are awakened by a call at 3 a.m., informing you that your loved one is in crisis due to addiction or mental illness. Maybe he or she has been incarcerated, hospitalized, or left for dead from an overdose. Who would you turn to and what would you do next? Walter Wolf got that very call when his own family member was in crisis . There was no playbook, but Walter knew who to call — a friend in the treatment world who knew exactly what to do. And that got him thinking about the $42 billion unregulated treatment industry with its share of grifters and 1-800 toll-free call centers standing by to promise you anything to get your credit card number. Who protects the uninitiated terrified to the point of doing anything they're told to save their loved one? Wolf knew something had to change. Families hit by addiction like Wolf’s needed a “how-to” book on finding the right treatment at the right rehab. Since that book didn’t exist, he wrote it himself. From intervention to recovery, The Right Rehab is a step-by-step guide that details how to identify and access treatment options available to all individuals and families, no matter how plentiful or spare their resources. Due to Walter's relationships with the most ethical and renowned professionals in the treatment world, he is able to explain the treatment plan principled experts insist is the most evidence-based, dependable, and customizable for the individual who is fully committed to sobriety. The Right Rehab is for the millions of vulnerable, terrified and uninitiated families who need to know what to do first, next, and into the future,while protecting them from programs that don’t work. No one wants to get that call, but many can see it coming. Arm yourself ahead of time with this clear, concise, and easy-to-follow guide to getting the right help for your loved one.

A gripping, ultimately triumphant memoir that's also the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of the neuroscience of addiction written for the general public. FROM THE INTRODUCTION: "We are prone to a cycle of craving what we don't have, finding it, using it up or losing it, and then craving it all the more. This cycle is at the root of all addictions, addictions to drugs, sex, love, cigarettes, soap operas, wealth, and wisdom itself. But why should this be so? Why are we desperate for what we don't have, or can't have, often at great cost to what we do have, thereby risking our peace and contentment, our safety, and even our lives?" The answer, says Dr. Marc Lewis, lies in the structure and function of the human brain. Marc Lewis is a distinguished neuroscientist. And, for many years, he was a drug addict himself, dependent on a series of dangerous substances, from LSD to heroin. His narrative moves back and forth between the often dark, compellingly recounted story of his relationship with drugs and a revelatory analysis of what was going on in his brain. He shows how drugs speak to the brain - which is designed to seek rewards and soothe pain - in its own language. He shows in detail the neural mechanics of a variety of powerful drugs and of the onset of addiction, itself a distortion of normal perception. Dr. Lewis freed himself from addiction and ended up studying it. At the age of 30 he traded in his pharmaceutical supplies for the life of a graduate student, eventually becoming a professor of developmental psychology, and then of neuroscience - his field for the last 12 years. This is the story of his journey, seen from the inside out.

A guide to all kinds of addiction from a star who has struggled with heroin, alcohol, sex, fame, food and eBay, that will help addicts and their loved ones make the first steps into recovery “This manual for self-realization comes not from a mountain but from the mud...My qualification is not that I am better than you but I am worse.” —Russell Brand With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his fourteen years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction—from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not “Why are you addicted?” but "What pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running—into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person’s arms?" Russell has been in all the twelve-step fellowships going, he’s started his own men’s group, he’s a therapy regular and a practiced yogi—and while he’s worked on this material as part of his comedy and previous bestsellers, he’s never before shared the tools that really took him out of it, that keep him clean and clear. Here he provides not only a recovery plan, but an attempt to make sense of the ailing world.