Holistic Rehab Therapies

Are Alternative Addiction Treatments Helpful, Harmful, or Head Games? (A Penguin Special from Viking)

Anne M. Fletcher is a trusted medical writer and the bestselling author of eight books. Her most recent, Inside Rehab: The Surprising Truth About Addiction Treatment—and How to Get Help That Works Inside Rehab, documents what works and what doesn’t when it comes to treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. She spent years visiting treatment programs and talking to hundreds of rehab clients, staffers, program administrators, and leading experts to discover the strategies that have been shown in scientific studies to be effective for helping people overcome addiction. In her investigation of scientifically sound approaches for helping people overcome addictions, no “holistic” or “alternative” treatments—sometimes called “complementary” or “integrative” therapies—surfaced. Nevertheless, alternative approaches (such as acupuncture, energy psychology, equine-assisted therapy, neurofeedback, psychodrama, reiki, somatic experiencing, and massage therapy) figure prominently on the list of interventions offered by many programs. In Holistic Rehab Therapies: Are Alternative Addiction Treatments Helpful, Harmful, or Head Games? Fletcher takes a close look at alternative treatments to answer, what do such interventions add to the quality of the rehab experience? Do these therapies increase the chances of getting and staying sober? Are they worth the added expense? Could their benefit be just a placebo effect? Could some of them possibly be harmful? This Special is a companion to Inside Rehab, available in February from Viking.