Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System by Lonny Shavelson

From the Publisher

"The human face of drug addiction has been lost in a blizzard of statistics, stereotypes, and hyped-up media images. In Hooked, Lonny Shavelson takes a powerful and unprecedented journey into the lives of addicts struggling to get clean. Shavelson, a noted physician, photographer, and journalist, trailed five addicts for two years through different California drug rehabilitation programs, some voluntary and others court-mandated. On a gripping trek, he follows addicts behind the closed doors of rehabilitation centers, doctors' offices, and judges' chambers, and, often, back to the street." "Defying expectations about drug treatment and how it works, Hooked highlights the links between drug addiction, mental illness, and trauma, including child abuse - links that are too often overlooked by current treatment efforts. Shavelson argues for an integrated approach to drug treatment that addresses the root causes of drug abuse, not just its outward behaviors." "The topic of drug addiction touches almost every family, and Shavelson explores it with the same sensitivity and insight he brought to his previous book on physician-assisted suicide."--BOOK JACKET.

Journal of the American Medical Association - Barry Liskow

Shavelson has provided a valuable service to his community, profession, and the five troubled friends he made in writing this book. He has given those entrapped in a web of addiction, poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and uncoordinated care a face and a voice. Both the faces and voices insist that they not be abandoned to the current well-meaning but all too often ineffective system for helping them recover from the their disease of addiction and its consequences.

Booknews

Shavelson is a physician and journalist who followed five addicts through various drug rehabilitation programs in California. Their stories, often told in their own words and punctuated by b&w photos Shavelson took as the five traversed the system and the streets, highlight the links between drug addiction, mental illness, and trauma, including child abuse. Shavelson argues for an integrated approach to drug treatment that addresses the fundamental causes of drug abuse, not just its outward symptoms and behaviors. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

• ISBN: 1565847792
  
• ISBN-13: 9781565847798
• Format: Paperback, 1pp
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Pub. Date: November 2002
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 157,142