Last week, Lindsay Lohan left jail and entered a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. If the scene inspired deja vu, it wasn't just because it was the fourth time she had headed to rehab in four years. It was because the spectacle of a celebrity entering a drug and alcohol treatment center, relapsing, then heading to rehab again -- and again and again -- has become depressingly familiar.
For decades, Americans have clung to a near-religious conviction that rehab -- and the 12-step model pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous that almost all facilities rely upon -- offers effective treatment for alcoholism and other addictions.
Here's the problem: We have little indication that this treatment is effective. When an alcoholic goes to rehab but does not recover, it is he who is said to have failed. But it is rehab that is failing alcoholics. The therapies offered in most U.S. alcohol treatment centers are so divorced from state-of-the-art of medical knowledge that we might dismiss them as merely quaint -- if it weren't for the fact that alcoholism is a deadly and devastating disease. > > > >
