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Alcoholic avatars and penny pinching insurance companies - a match made in heaven.

None of us would complain about less time spent wasted in doctor's waiting rooms, or better and more affordable healthcare! Emerging internet based interactive platforms promise to increase our access to health information and healthcare participation, while allowing a finite number of doctors to treat as many patients - more comprehensively and effectively.

We are not the same group of patients we were 15 years ago. Who goes to the doctor now before taking a self diagnostic tour of internet medical sites? We often scare ourselves with misdiagnoses of terrible diseases, but we endeavor to get informed and by doing so we participate better in the healthcare process - and at its best, healthcare is not passive, but interactive.

The potential for positive change is great - but will the pendulum swing too far? As interactive net based communication between patient and provider improves, will financial pressures compel the e-sourcing of things that just don't make sense? Will we soon see virtual drug rehabs?

The Good - Where E-Care Makes Sense

www.reliefinsite.com is great. Not too fancy, no bells and whistles, just a simple and effective way for pain patients to communicate their symptoms in real time, and longitudinally, to their doctors. Pain patients can create what is essentially an online pain diary - and as they experience pain on a day-to-day basis, they can record information about their symptoms in their diary.

It's collaborative too. Doctor's can log on, and given permission, access a patient's diary, see what's really happening, and even write notes to the patient in their diary - on a day-to-day basis. Great stuff - It just makes sense. No need to try and explain a history of pain in a 15 minute office appointment, that's a pretty tough thing to do. Doctors get to see what's really happening, can make better diagnosis's and can react to changing symptoms in real time. It provides a way for more accurate information sharing, it saves money and everyone's time, and it allows doctors to treat their patients more effectively.

That's the kind of stuff we need. Platforms that improve healthcare efficiency while at best also improving the standard of care, or at the very least - not reducing it.

Except for the very rich, in any country you can name, healthcare systems are overburdened. Resources are finite and never enough to provide optimal care to all that demand it. It's a fact of life, and for now, it's just a case of managing the shortfall.

Internet healthcare systems could free up such enormous resources of time and money - ensuring that those that need a hospital bed and a doctor's care get it - and those that don't, stay home. How many parents, after some deliberation, make a midnight trip to the emergency room in search of treatment for something that they are 99% sure is not serious? For parents, a 1% chance of tragedy is more than enough to justify a few hours of inconvenience and 99 wasted trips out of a hundred.

On an individual basis, this makes perfect sense - but systematically, it strains resources - and strained resources mean lessened care for everyone.

E-based diagnostic platforms, staffed by doctors and nurses, serving as a front line operation would make sense, and in some jurisdictions, already exist. Get on the video phone, explain the situation, and a lot of the time, they are going to be able to tell you with certainty that there is no need to go to the hospital.

How about on the back end? How many hospital beds stay filled each year by doctors pretty sure that the patient could go home, but wanting one more day of observation - just to be certain. What if those patients that doctors were almost sure were going to be OK - were released one day earlier, but remained linked via web based diagnostics tools? The doctor could still monitor the symptoms in real time - could get someone back to the hospital if needed, but tens of thousands of beds a year would be free to people waiting for them. Better health care for all. Some people would die, but many more people would live - saving more lives for the same expenditure.

The Bad - When Only Face-to-Face Will Do

In the short to mid range future, you need not be terribly imaginative to envision the sort of benefits that interactive net based healthcare services could result in - the two suggested above are only the tip of that iceberg. But there are certain services that do not lend themselves well to distance interaction. Poisoning, trauma, pancreatitis - you can name thousands of conditions that, if you had one, you'd probably want in-person and face-to-face medical care for.

What about addiction counseling? I'd argue that although less obvious and dramatic, it also requires in-person treatment for any real odds of success. I'm not talking about detox, which obviously demands medical supervision; I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of long term treatment - group therapy, cognitive therapy, psychotherapy, etc. A case could be made that such forms of counseling could be provided more cheaply, and with little loss in efficacy, using internet communication technologies. Actually, a case will be made, and e-rehabs are likely on their way.

Addiction though, is tricky. It's a gestalt kind of disease, in which the sum of the parts never seem to equal the whole, and a disease that demands treatment of a psychological intensity that matches the cognitive manipulations of the disease.

You could arrange for an internet based group therapy session. It would be cheap and easy, but it wouldn't work very well. Group therapy works when participants are fiercely and honestly involved. You don't get that when tuning out is as easy as checking your email as you sit in therapy; and manipulations don't get spotted as they do when you squirm, lying, in person to a group.

You could conveniently get individual therapy at home, over the internet; but the trust building needed for effective counseling takes time in the best of cases, and a situation where the patient is miles removed from the therapist - is not the best of cases for relationship formation. And forget about what our non verbal communication would otherwise reveal.

Could you learn how to make sober friends again, online? Would you really do that yoga - if no one could see what you were up to? Would you tune out, when you didn't like what you were hearing - sometimes people need a little push to make a breakthrough, but it's a lot easier to close your browser window than it is to walk out of a therapy session.

Logistically, online addiction treatment is a cakewalk - online addiction treatment that works may be another story.

The Ugly - Financial Pressure

Interactive net communication will create savings opportunities. Ideally, healthcare e-sourcing never harms patient care. The selective application creates a higher standard of individual care in certain areas, and areas unsuited to the application of the e-sourcing benefit from increased funding from the savings - An opportunity for better healthcare, for all.

But if the potential savings in any area become significant enough, there will undoubtedly exist pressure to accept an erosion of healthcare quality in the face of savings - or to put it more bluntly - profit.

Already, consumers with excellent private health coverage who want to get residential drug treatment find that they are obliged to try outpatient first, for a long while, before their insurance company will fund a residential stay. Once insurance companies have an even cheaper option, it's hard to foresee how they won't compel us to use it first.

Addiction treatment isn't like a lot of other disorders. If you had cancer, and the insurance company forced you to try a less expensive procedure first, prior to allowing the more intensive treatment - if that first one didn't work, you'd be ready that next day to sign up for the better one. Alcoholics and drug addicts are more easily discouraged (or their disease is better at manipulating their behavior) and if the first treatment doesn't work, odds are it will take a while (if ever) before they approach a second round. A very cynical person might suspect that insurance companies are counting on this...

It will be interesting, and great changes in healthcare over the next decade are a certainty. Most will be positive. The potential for great advances in systematic levels of care exists through the selective application of resource saving distance treatments. There will, I suspect, be an ugly side to it though, and I'd wager virtual drug rehabs will be at the head of that, unfortunate, pack.

I hope I'm wrong though.

Yay Drug Courts!

It's hard to find anyone these days with much of anything bad to say about drug courts. These alternative sentencing vehicles are saving tax payers a huge amount of money, they are freeing up space in overcrowded jails, they are helping people in need beat terrible addictions, reuniting families and the recidivism rates for drug court graduates are far lower than for offenders processed through the traditional court system.

Yay!

Seriously, they work, and they save everyone money, and it's great news that drug courts are now in operation in all 50 states, with a total of 2000 in operation or in the works. But They have created a rather strange set of circumstances.

• If you are poor, addicted to drugs and alcohol and really want some help to get better - but are not a criminal - you are out of luck.
• If you are poor, addicted to drugs or alcohol, don't care if you get help or not, and commit crimes - then you get free drug treatment.

It's an absurdity, and I have spoken with a few people over the last months who find themselves in this frustrating predicament. It seems to them, that the only way they are going to be able to get drug treatment, is by being arrested for a crime.

Not ideal

 Drug courts aren't going away, nor should they. They work better than the traditional court system, they are more humane and they treat the root cause of such a lot of the criminal behavior in this country today. But why should we wait to provide funding for people only after they commit crimes? Why not give them a leg up before it gets to that stage?

Let's keep the drug courts, but expand the programming so that anyone in need can have access to the same sorts of treatment programs. Maybe that will cut down on the eventual need for courts and drug courts alike, while saving a great deal of tax-payer money on everything from law-enforcement to welfare to health care.

Besides, it's the right thing to do - and it's only fair.

We, as humans, are social animals. From birth we learn from our family; as children, friends take on a bigger role until when in our teens, the collective wisdom of our peers exerts a primal influence. As adults we tend to think it all past us, but in reality our peer environment still influences our actions and perceptions, and the people we choose to associate with tend to have a profound impact on our lives. And this is why although recovery alone is possible, recovery in a group is far more possible, and for the best likelihood of success recovery should harness the power of the group. As using addicts or alcoholics, we tend to associate socially with others who share our life-focus for intoxication; it's a natural byproduct of the disease! We take our social cues from our group of peers, and in a big way what we perceive to be acceptable standards of behaviors are derived from what others around us are also doing. If I drink 12 beers a day but my friend drinks 24 beers a day, well, I'm a moderate drinker! Getting into rehab offers a lot. It offers a period of enforced sobriety, which can transform a life on its own. It offers the wisdom and guidance of addictions professionals, and it offers classes in relapse avoidance and life skills that impart the tools we'll need to succeed. But more, much more than this, it also offers us the inspiration of others also in recovery. We learn through the process of group recovery that although we are unique as individuals, our problems with drugs and alcohol share an incredible similarity. We also see that if others, who have it just as bad as we do, can recover - then there is no reason why we can't too. There is a real sense of inspiration that comes from working together towards a common goal with others who share the same troubles; and it can work a real magic on even the most reluctant and hard-headed of addicts. Rehab is supposed to be a place of transformation, and there is true power in this collective effort of recovery. You might be able to do it alone, but it's easier and far more likely done in a group setting. Find a place of healing where you can find your inspiration. Find a group of fellow alcoholics or addicts who understand you as you understand them, and start your journey towards recovery together. It helps.

How much will it cost, where can I go, who can I trust and what can I do if I don’t have any money… but really need some help? Although making the decision to get professional help takes you a giant step forward to getting better, even after you have committed to change the difficulties involved in selecting an appropriate and affordable service provider can easily overwhelm; and the sad fact is that far too many people who do want to get help just get discouraged by the high costs, the waiting lists and the sales pitches from private clinics who may or may not have your best interests in mind. Here is a step by step guide that you may use to help you to better understand your options, and get you started in narrowing down the available and affordable providers in your area. In broad terms, your drug and alcohol rehab options may be subdivided into 4 distinct categories. 1) Private or non profit but expensive drug and alcohol rehabs. 2) State run rehabs or state funded slots in a program. 3) Low cost drug or alcohol rehabs that do not require state funding or Medicaid 4) Totally free drug and alcohol rehabs and sober living environments, many Christian in nature, but a good number of secular options as well. There is some truth in the saying "you get what you pay for" and in general, the higher the cost of the rehab the more comfortable the facilities, the shorter the waiting period and the greater intensity in group and individual therapy as offered. There are however some real lemons in all price ranges, and you do want to ensure that any rehab under consideration enjoys a good reputation for services provided. How to Find a Rehab In general, you should approach this list as 1-4 in order of desirability and action. If you have good private insurance, use it and get the best; it's well worth it. If you can access state funded treatment and the waiting list is acceptable, you may get high quality free care including medical detox. If you can’t access state funded care or the wait is just too long, find a private rehab in your area that offers very low cost care, and get into treatment quickly. If you can't access state care, have no insurance, have no money to pay for any form of treatment…you can still get care and get it soon, look into totally free rehabs and long term care facilities as a last option. Whatever you do, get help and get it quickly. Any form of residential treatment is far preferable to months or years of continuing abuse. 1) If You Have Private Health Insurance…Use It! This is what you've been paying towards all those yeas, and you are entitled to coverage for your medically necessary treatment. The degree of coverage as offered varies greatly between companies and even between coverage plans, but as a first step, you need to call you insurance provider and find out just how much you are entitled to. If your policy information is dated, you should not rely solely on your at home resource materials. There have been some legislative changes for the better over the past years and you may be covered for more than you think you are. You may be covered for all or nearly all of the cost of a private residential facility; and if this is the case you could be getting care tomorrow at a top quality facility. Even if your insurance company will pay for a substantial portion of the costs, you don’t want to waste your energy, time and hope at a substandard facility. Please feel free to contact us at www.ChooseHelp.com for recommendations or help in selecting a quality private rehab in your area. You may find that your insurance provider will only cover a portion of your care and that to enroll in a quality private rehab you will need to contribute a substantial amount of money. No one enjoys paying for care, but if you can afford it, if you can get reasonable credit to finance your stay, or if you can borrow the money from family; you may want to consider your contribution as a worthy investment in your future health and happiness. It can be pretty expensive, but then again, so are drugs and alcohol; and if you factor in the savings from abuse, the savings of better health, and the likelihood that you will excel in your career once sober, getting better always makes good financial sense…whatever the initial cost. 2) Your State Addictions Agency is there to Help If you have no private health insurance and lack the means for expensive private rehab facility self payments, your first step towards care should be contacting your local county mental health and addictions services board. Please see state by state phone numbers for contact information in your area. Even if you do not currently qualify for Medicaid, if you lack insurance coverage, and meet certain low income criteria, you may be eligible for free or very low cost local care. Some publicly funded facilities provide an excellent standard of care, but in general, due to funding limitations you cannot expect the same degree of privacy and comfort, of individual therapies and of quick entry as with private care. Many people will qualify for state funded rehab slots but because of high demand, the waiting period for services can be long. Still, it's very much worth a couple of phone calls and a trip to your county health office to find out if you are eligible for state funded care. 3) Low-cost community or private care If you have no private insurance and do not qualify for state funding, or do qualify, but don’t want to wait for weeks or months for care, your next step would be to contact local low-cost residential rehabilitation programs in your area. Many base their fee assessment on a sliding scale of income, and will work with you to ensure that you can get the care you need at a price you can afford, and many self mandate that no one be turned away for financial reasons. The majority of facilities in this sector fall into either Christian rehab care or long term sober living residences and both may be a good fit for you. Christian programs may offer very low cost care to those in need, and sober living homes may not require any money up front, and only demand that after a specified period you gain employment and contribute a low monthly rent to the maintenance of the house. You may also find a local residential rehab in your area offering services at a full price of less than $1000 per week, with fee discounts available based on need. Please see the list of state facilities in your area for details. If you cannot find a suitable facility in your area, the local Church, Mosque or Temple can be a great resources for low cost options, and your Pastor, Imam, Priest or Rabbi will very likely know of local faith based low cost rehabs. 4) Totally free care For those in real need, and for those without the ability to pay anything towards the cost of their care, their still exist hundreds of completely free residential rehab programs. The Salvation Army runs almost 200 long term rehab programs nation wide without asking a penny, and the Union and Baptist Missions run a similar number. Most will ask a long term commitment to care and most will have structured and strict rules of conduct, but they act only out of a desire to serve and out of real experience towards your recovery. Some programs may have waiting lists, but in general these waiting periods are far shorter than for comparable free care within state funded rehabs, and you may not need wait at all for entry into a program. Most free care providers will demand that you show a sincere personal motivation to change as a criterion for admission. Private facilities do not request this, which is fortunate as statistics show that a person's motivation for entry has very little influence over the eventual success rates. Contact me if you need help locating a low cost drug rehab in your area. You Can Get the help you Need Even if you have no insurance, have no money and don’t qualify for Medicaid, you still have hundreds of options available to you, and some of these offer a very high standard of care. If you want to get help…you can. Don’t wait another day before starting the journey to health, sobriety and happiness. It's not going to be easy, there are no guarantees, and the process can be painful; but the payoff at the end makes it all worthwhile. With sobriety you will perform better at work, greatly improve your health and your ultimate lifespan, contribute fairly to your family and no longer act in ways that make you ashamed, but over which you seem to have little control. You can get better, there is always hope. Alcohol and Drug Rehab Directory
A directory of reputable and ethical alcohol and drug rehab centers.

Rehab is a business, and it's big business, and as unfortunate as it may be, those without money wait a lot longer for care; and too often never do get into treatment, deterred either by unreasonable waiting times or by a simple lack of access.

Private rehab treatments can be very expensive, and it's not at all unusual for a facility to charge upwards of $20 000 for a month of care, and if you relied on a web search alone you might believe that these rehabs were your only option.

Thankfully, although charity and non profit rehabs may not have the resources to compete with the marketing efforts of expensive private rehabs, they do have the resolve to maintain low cost and even free services to all in need, and all over the country.

There is no reason for anyone to think they can’t afford rehab. Private rehabs may be out of reach, but there is someone, somewhere, waiting with a bed ready for you, and with a concerned heart ready to guide you out of your pain.

Contact me to find out what your rehab options are, how much they cost, how to access state funded rehabs, and how to find a free or low cost rehab that can get you in the door soon.

Rich or poor, there's someone ready to help you.

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about drug or alcohol rehabs…until they need one. Once you make a decision to enter into treatment, the sooner you can get help the better. Unfortunately, since you need to make a decision about rehab quickly, you can easily get overwhelmed by the difficulties of finding an appropriate facility, and even in finding accurate and transparent information. Try typing affordable drug rehab into Google, you'll get a lot of hits, but you can be sure the first 500 won't be affordable! The sad reality is that too many people with temporary motivations to get better just get so frustrated and deterred by the stress and challenge of finding affordable care that they just give up. Even if you have quality and comprehensive private health coverage, you don't want to waste your time and your hope on a poor quality treatment experience; it's your life and your health and happiness that are at stake, and you don’t want to make a mistake. If you don’t have comprehensive insurance coverage the situation grows even more difficult. Where can you go for rehab you can afford; who will help you when you can’t afford an expensive up front fee? Recognizing the problems inherent in getting into appropriate and affordable treatment, I have compiled a resource book designed to assist you in understanding your options, your rights and even your needs; and to help you in locating an affordable residential rehab program that's going to work for you. Some of the questions that I have struggled with include: Do I need rehab? What kind of rehab do I need? How much does rehab cost? What type of rehab can I afford? Where can I go to find low cost help? How can I get a family member into rehab? What can family do to help during and after rehab? Do I need to detox first? What about rehab for my­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ special need? What are some phone numbers for low cost rehabs in my area? Where else can I get information on addiction, rehabs and recovery? I hope you will find the answers to all of these questions and more contained within, and I believe that everyone can find treatment in a timely manner and at a price they can afford, they simply need to know where to look. Please contact me if you need any help in finding affordable care. You can get better; it will be hard…and it will be worth it!

There is no problem. Anyone who wants to get into drug rehab, regardless of how much or how little money they have, can get in… Or at least that's the message I keep getting from state social services personnel. Which is kind of funny, since a lot of the people I talk to that are struggling with addictions are telling me a very different story. I've been working hard as of late on a book on low cost drug rehabs, and as a part of this book I wanted to be able to explain how someone would go about claiming any entitled state subsidized benefits The process has been enlightening to say the least, and I can now understand just how frustrated people can get by a system that seems designed to have them fail. Who you gonna call? Firstly, who even knows where you're supposed to go or who you’re supposed to call to find out about state funded programs. The information is there, but it took me a lot of determined searching to find it, and I spend most of my day reading about addiction on the internet! Did you say 8 weeks? Secondly, even if you are eligible for state funded programs, you can be looking at a waiting period of up to two months. TWO MONTHS! When you need help with an addiction, you can’t be waiting 8 weeks to get into rehab…you need it now! And it's not surprising that so many people just get so discouraged by the whole process that they give up, turn back to drugs and don’t even think about getting better again for a long while. I don’t blame any individual working within these governmental agencies, and I'm sure that they are doing their best and working with what they have; but I've got to say that the attitude that I got from a lot of these people was that the system is fine, the system is working, and we have everything in place that people need. Finally, something that makes sense… I was repeatedly sent to a SAMHSA rehab finder tool; which is quite a good tool in theory. What it is is you go to the SAMHSA web site, and when you finally navigate through the many many options, you find this tool. You type in your zip code, check off what you’re looking for from a list of options and this tool will come back to you with a list of rehab facilities within a few miles of your house. Sounds like a great thing, and it is…in theory. I tried it out for New York City, and I did get a number of hits. I was looking for rehabs that stated that they offered sliding fee scale payments, and I got great many that said that they did. Great! I started calling them…the first ten that on the federal government's treatment locator website claimed to offer sliding fee scale payment assistance, when you actually call them on the phone…have no idea what you are talking about! They take Medicare, which is great if you have Medicare, but if you had Medicare you would probably be getting service through your local state social services clinic already, and wouldn’t need to use the treatment locator. So if you are looking for low cost rehabs on your own…I feel your pain. State and federal initiatives seem set to work great in theory, and are failing miserably in reality. Government: 1) Make your websites better! They suck. 2) If you are going to offer web services, give us at least a hope of finding them on the internet. 3) Fix your treatment locator tool. It’s a good idea, but it’s not working, and you just keep sending people to use it. 4) 2 months is not an acceptable waiting time 5) You may say that everyone can get help, I say different. And the crazy thing is that there are thousands and thousands of rehabs in America that do offer low cost or free care, but unless you have incredible web savvy, or are willing to spend a week looking (I just did) you are not going to find them. If you do want some help locating a low cost rehab by the way, drop me a line and I'll hook you up.

You may have done some terrible things while under the influence of alcoholism or addiction, and you may be ashamed of what you have become; but at the core, you are not a bad person you are a sick person, and the things you may have done do not reflect who you are and what you believe. A lot of us who struggle with addiction do things we are ashamed of, and we feel shame and guilt, and sometimes don’t really believe that we deserve to be treated well. We do, and you should never consider getting help for your disease at a facility that doesn’t treat you with respect, that doesn’t treat your concerns as valid and that doesn't care for your recovery more than it cares for your admissions check. Addiction is a disease, and medically recognized as such by all major medical organizations, and although we may start down the road to dependency with willful consumption, once addicted we truly do lose control over our actions and even our thoughts. Although we are legally responsible for what we do, once addicted our moral compass cannot often withstand the pulls to drug or alcohol use regardless of what may stand in our way. No one who experiments with a bit of cocaine at a party ever imagines themselves stealing from loved ones, no one who enjoyed beers under the bleachers in high school ever imagined the pain of an alcoholic DUI and no one who enjoyed prescribed pain pills a little too much would have believed the lies they would tell to get the drugs they needed. Our actions while addicted are not who we are, and we deserve the same quality of treatment as anyone sick with a disease deserves. Respect does not disallow tough and confrontational treatments if that's what's required, but only if done for a reason, and not simply because they can be done, or because we don’t deserve better. Respect starts even before we enter into treatment, and when calling around and trying to choose a facility for your care, you deserve to be treated well, given the information you need to make an educated decision, and never as a burden or a bother. If you are treated as such before you even enter into residence, you cannot expect better once under their care, and in fact you should expect worse. You have value, and your potential exists just below the surface of addiction and despair, and however low you may have sunk, you are only a month away from your former self. Make sure you receive care at a facility that's going to treat you well; it's the least you deserve.

Now a lot of people have a bit of a problem with evangelical Christianity. They don’t much care for people who try to convince them out of word views and beliefs they're perfectly happy with already, and they feel that there is something a bit distasteful in the whole missionary to the world, spreading the light kind of thing.

And I can understand where they're coming from as well, but when you look at who is and who is not stepping up to help people with addictions in this country, you have to give a lot of credit to Christian good works.

I've just spent a week compiling an enormous list of free or almost free rehabs (1300 or more by now, contact me if you need some advice!) and the there are more Christian residential programs offering free of charge care to those in need than all others combined. Some may be effective and some may struggle, but at the core, they strive to do good, strive with limited resources, and strive to include access to all in need…without a thought of monetary reward.

Now there is no doubt that they act out of dual motivations, and intermingled with a desire to do good works is surely a desire to spread the word of Christianity; but they make no apologies for their actions and they never hide their intentions. They are doing what they think is right and what needs doing, and they are saving an awful lot of lives in the process.

Compare them to another "religious" organization, Narconon, which although a front for Scientology, makes no mention of this in any of their aggressive promotional literature, and once they get you into their quasi scientific program of questionable merits, do make efforts to convert you to their world view. To me, this is extremely distasteful.

So if you do resent the motivations and actions of evangelical Christianity and their works to spread the word, that is your right; but remember that they do great good for those in need and with no where else to go; and if you feel strongly enough about it, get involved and give these people some secular alternatives for help.

They do want you to "switch teams" as it were, and in the process of saving lives from the pains of addiction and despair, they probably recruit a few grateful members along the way. But if your philosophy is to deny them the right to do their Christian good works, without somehow providing an equal quality and quantity of secular services to those in need, then you espouse hypocrisy. Addicts and alcoholics enter into free of charge recovery programs willingly and with thanks, and they are never forced to participate. If you're trying to save them from the pains of conversion, you're sending back to the pains of addiction…and ask them which fate they'd rather.

All of us should feel some personal obligation to do more good than harm throughout the course of our lives, and there are a great many ways to even out that balance sheet; but those who speak badly about Christian recovery organizations, who would deny them funding and who would like to see them gone do not contribute good, and without providing an acceptable alternative, do harm.

Whether you are Christian or not, see that these people do good works, and if you don’t like it, don’t wish them removed, but give freely to the United Way or to your local secular shelter or rehab, and let them expand their services to more who need it.

In my readings and research for this blog, for my own recovery, and for my original entry into treatment, I have done A LOT of browsing on the internet about treatment and recovery. I have gone through literally thousands of web sites on addiction, and through hundreds of privately run web sites for drug or alcohol treatment centers; and although some are good and some are not, they share a universal and eternal reluctance to give you certain bits of information; information that you need when trying to make an appropriate decision on your treatment needs. "Please, please, please, just tell me the price, for heavens sake, I need to get help, I don’t have time to waste calling every recovery hotline and dealing with the sales pitch at every center I have no hope of affording. I'm having a tough enough time here; am I asking too much?" There are great treatment centers and there are those that only want you through the doors so as to start spending your admissions check…and not on therapies you need either. When someone makes a decision to get help, they need to get it fast; too many people with transient good motivations get discouraged before they even start from the extreme difficulties inherent in simply selecting an affordable and appropriate treatment center for their needs. They're often not in a great shape to be making such an important decision, and they shouldn’t be forced to jump through quite so many hoops on their journey to help. If you really care… So here is my plea to all of you treatment center owners out there. Show us you’re one of the good guys, show us you care about our recovery as you claim on your website; don’t make us call your number for the most basic of information. If you really care about us, give us what we need to make a decision on treatment. If we can afford you, and you offer comprehensive and professional treatment, We WILL call your number, we want to get help, that's why we're looking. Please tell us: How much is it…for real? What kinds of therapies you offer How many individual therapy sessions per week? How many to a room? What other types of programs do you offer in addition to therapy? What's your success rate…don’t lie to us now! How long can we come back for aftercare? Can our family participate? What insurance companies you work with? Do you offer credit?What's your philosophy of care? Give us the information we need. We've got to make a decision fast, there are hundreds of treatment centers available, and we don’t want to get so discouraged that we delay needed treatment. We understand that you run a business and you expect a profit; that's fine, but since you're in the business of helping people, start with a little compassion even before we sign up.