The New Addiction Treatment

Addiction is the United States' most pervasive and damaging public health problem, yet most Americans receive care that results in a failure rate that is both astronomically high and shielded from public view. The New Addiction Treatment examines the current state of the addiction treatment business and explores the reasons why (unlike those for all other behavioral, psychological, or neurological disorders) the treatment of addiction has been stagnant and little improved since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. After describing the size and scope of the problem and examining actual recovery rates for those who undergo treatment, David A. Patterson Silver Wolf asserts that there are effectively two kinds of treatment regimes in the United States: those that medical doctors receive, and those for the rest of us. The former has about an 80% success rate, the latter about an 80% failure rate. Drawing from his own experience as a former patient and person in long-term recovery, as well as his 22 years as a clinician, professor, and researcher, Patterson Silver Wolf describes many of the impediments to effective treatment today. This book offers a plausible and cost-effective way to disrupt the dismal status quo and realistically aspire to a higher success rate for everyone who receives professional help for a substance use disorder.