America is facing a harrowing opioid epidemic, one that kills thousands of people each year. But the rehab system that could help combat the crisis is failing. It is far too expensive for typical families and often provides addiction treatments that aren’t proven or actually have evidence against them.
Vox is investigating America’s addiction treatment system. Help us by sharing your stories.
Addiction treatment and rehab are often expensive and fail to help. Share your stories to help Vox investigate.
Amanda Northrop/Vox
“The problem in the industry isn’t that we have a few bad actors,” Tami Mark, a health economist at the research foundation RTI International, told me. “It’s that a large portion of the addiction industry isn’t providing the type of care that we know leads to recovery.”
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to addiction treatment patients and their families, hearing about the many failings of the addiction treatment system. You can read the first story in the series here. Many of them shared stories of spending tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars for care that ultimately didn’t help them get better. They told me of unproven approaches, such as equine therapy (in which patients spend time with horses), wilderness therapy (focused on outdoor activities), and confrontational treatments.
And they told me, time and time again, of the deaths the rehab system couldn’t prevent.
“It is a scam,” Carol Beyer, founder of Families for Sensible Drug Policy and a mom in New Jersey, told me. She estimates she spent well over $100,000 on treatment, and still lost her two sons to drug overdoses.
Here at Vox, I want to hear more from patients and their families, so for the next year or so, I’m asking people to share their stories with me. If you’d like to help out, please complete the form below (you can also access it directly here if you’re having trouble seeing it) or email me at german.lopez@vox.com.
