July 1, 1990
Debran Rowland’s story last Sunday on addiction treatment at Brighton
Woods Treatment Center is well-done and welcome. It was marred only by a
misstatement or two, an undocumented "statistic" and one glaring error
of omission.
Speaking of adolescent addicts, Ms. Rowland states that "most of them
probably won’t make it in treatment, statistics say. What a dour prognosis!
It is also quite puzzling. When I was public relations director at the same
facility 10 years ago, our own-year followup records indicated that 75 percent
to 80 percent of former patients were maintaining sobriety when following prescribed
aftercare plans. What are these adolescents doing wrong today that dooms "most
of them" ? And while Ms. Rowland is correct in stating that some will use
again or end up in jail, I hastily agree that "more than a few" will
end up dead. In fact, without effective treatment, they will ALL end up
dead — one way or another — as a result of their addiction.
Bear in mind that alcohol abuse is confined to drunks.
A drunk is a person who can choose when and where and how much to drink — and
usually overdoes it. An alcoholic doesn’t have that choice. They always overdo
it. Their drinking pattern is one of compulsive-obsessive behavior due to a
disease typified by denial and relapse.
The American Medical Association
stated in 1956 at its Seattle
convention that alcoholism is indeed a treatable disease. Current research
confirms that it is biogenetic in origin.
The article makes only a mere mention of Narcotics
Anonymous, then compounds the slight by not even mentioning its forebear
— Alcoholics Anonymous. Mentioning N.A. without mentioning A.A. is like writing
about America’s entry into World War II without mentioning Pearl Harbor.
Also, journalists — and their readers — should learn to distinguish between
"detoxification"
and "treatment."
The detox unit of a treatment center is considered nothing more than the emergency
room leading to the treatment procedure. The word detoxification comes from
the Greek and simply means "to take the poison out."
Alcoholism
is a disease. It cannot be cured but it can be treated successfully. And
its deadly toll will not be reversed significantly until we begin to reverse
the mountain of myths, misinformation and "statistics" which abound
in this otherwise enlightened and liberal age.
JACK O’NEIL
Sewickley