Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System
Last Updated on Saturday, 13 February 2010 08:19 Written by admin Saturday, 13 February 2010 08:19
- ISBN13: 9781565847798
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“Deeply felt, deftly rendered, stunningly informative and often enraging” (Publishers Weekly), Hooked appears as we are finally waking up to the inadequacies of our current drug-rehab policies. With court-mandated rehab being debated across the country, Shavelson’s in-depth look at the struggles of five addicts as they travel through the treatment maze makes a powerful case for reform.
Highly readable and shaped by Shavelson’s experience as a journalist and physician, Hooked takes us through the anguishing “intake” and controversial House meetings, inside counselors’ and judges’ offices where many treatment decisions are made, and to prison cells where, under current policies, many addicts end up. It explores the links between drug addiction, mental illness, and trauma, including child abuse—links often ignored by current rehab efforts—and argues for an integrated approach that treats the roots of drug abuse, not just the behavior itself.
Hailed as “compelling” and “heartbreaking” (Time Out), Hooked offers a provocative, honest look at the seemingly intractable issue of drug addiction, and offers powerful alternatives to our current policies.
Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System
Hooked is a facinating story of five peoples lives and should be read for this alone. The author does a great job of telling their stories. Painlessly wrapped inside these stories is a Masters Degree on the drug treatment system.
Hooked will give you an insight into drug treatment systems without the bias of the creators. Hooked will give you years of development history and terminology.
Finally, if your state or county is going to start or start-over a drug treatment program Hooked will tell you the best approach. The approach selected has results that clearly make it the plan of choice. (Read the book for the answer.)
Rating: 5 / 5
I work in the drug-use prevention field. I purchased this book for my own education. I became emotionally involved in the lives of the drug addicts featured in the book. It was beneficial to learn about their backgrounds and to see their daily lives in detail. I learned a great deal and am even more passionate about my work now!
Rating: 5 / 5
Lonny Shavelson has managed to turn what might have been a dry, preachy treatise into a lean, suspenseful page-turner with just the right touch of inventive language. His work lets you know that a gifted writer has flexed his literary muscles just enough to show you that he’s in charge of the material. But, at the same time, he has definitely succeeded at not letting his writing get in the way of absorbing life stories and the transmission of many useful nuggets of information. During his two years of journalistic investigation, Lonny gained the trust of some “difficult patients” and placed a very human face on the individuals who carry around the stigmatizing labels of “alcoholic” and “addict” in our society. He has accurately diagnosed the problems in San Francisco’s system of public health care as it relates to substance abuse treatment and offered a constructive solution in prescribing more and better training for the system’s substance abuse counselors and improved communication between the worlds of mental health and drug treatment.
However, he would need to walk on water or at least wield a magic wand to dissolve the intense political wrangling and top-heavy administrative structures of San Francisco’s Department of Public Health and each and every one of the more than 130 drug treatment programs in San Francisco. Having worked as a psychiatrist for nearly 10 years at San Francisco General Hospital, I, unfortunately, have had a front-row seat in witnessing the retarding effect that San Francisco’s bureaucratic stranglehold inflicts on our city’s most vulnerable and needy. While Lonny is a very talented humanitarian, journalist, and writer, he, after all, is only human, too.
Rating: 5 / 5
Especially for anyone who has been associated with the American substance abuse treatment system as a provider, this book should cause a sober reflection on the problems that permeate our disjointed efforts to help people gain and maintain recovery from addiction. The author’s purpose is to investigate the experiences of five “hard-core” addicts as they attempt to access the (comparatively) rich service network of a major city. Perhaps the two major criticisms made are that clients are rejected or dismissed for demonstrating they have the problem for which they’re coming to treatment (using), and that conventional treatment does not address the deep-seated psychological problems that the majority of seriously addicted people have. These observations are accurate. Although treatment advocates are certainly right to campaign for more public dollars, we must also look into our own house and make the changes suggested in this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
drug rehab right between the eyes that pulls no pun ches and shows us where we need to go next
Rating: 4 / 5