Inside Rehab: The Surprising Truth About Addiction Treatment-and How to Get Help That Works; and Clean: Overcoming Adiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy

A pair of books that are sharply critical of the addiction treatment industry were released by the popular press in 2013. Clean by David Sheff (2013) and Inside Rehab by Anne M. Fletcher (2013) both address America’s addiction epidemic and its treatment. The two books complement each other in several ways. While Sheff presents a sweeping polemic aimed at reforming the way we think about and treat addiction, Fletcher offers a more dispassionate critique of the treatment landscape. As is so often the case for those interested in addiction, both authors were motivated to write about the subject, at least in part, by personal experience: Sheff through being the parent of an addict and Fletcher through her own struggles with alcohol. As Sheff captured so poignantly in his 2008 memoir Beautiful Boy, he is the father of a drug-addicted son. Although Fletcher discussed her own struggle with problematic drinking in her 2001 book Sober for Good, she leaves out her personal experience in Inside Rehab and rather maintains the perspective of an objective investigator. Perhaps this is because she never was “inside rehab” during her own recovery. Nevertheless, both she and Sheff offer equally critical descriptions of our current system of care for those struggling with addictive disorders. Both authors use clear, straightforward prose that reveals their anger toward current addiction policy and treatment in the United States. Sheff’s primary thesis is that addiction should move swiftly away from being seen as a legal issue toward one that ought to be addressed purely as a medical problem. While many treatment centers, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), have long subscribed to the “disease model” of addiction treatment and in more recent years the National Institute on Drug Abuse has termed addiction a “brain disease,” Sheff does much to help us remove the quotation marks around the word disease. Fletcher, on the other hand, uses such quotation marks, signaling her own skepticism about the legitimacy of