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In the last forty years, there has been an explosion in the drug and alcohol rehab industry. There are rehab centers in every medium and large town in the country. Unfortunately, the science behind most of these programs has not kept up with the growth in facilities. Many facilites use what is called "evidence based treatment" protocols, meaning that someone did a study and the study showed that this type of program would work when applied broadly. Studies can be and are often funded by vested interests or are managed by personnel hired or subsidized by vested interests.Therefore, some studies find what they are looking for. 

For example, one of the latest growing forms of treatment is the opiate replacement therapy. Studies may have shown that people who had been addicted to opiates (heroin, morphine, opium or prescription drugs such as OxyContin or Vicodin) stayed off these drugs when they were given a replacement opiate medication. Based on this study, rehab centers adopt this treatment protocol and insurance companies accept this as a form of treatment. But the test that is missed in this system is the welfare of the addicted person. Do they get off drugs? Do they learn to live drug free? Do they learn what it is like to feel fully normal again without any drugs in their systems?  Do they recover from the cravings, guilt and depressionthat exist for any addict? Without these points of recovery, how successful is the opiate replacement therapy?

There are holistic programs that help a person cleanse his or her body of residual drugs, help alleviate the depression and guilt through counseling that helps a person come alive again, walks them through a restoration of relationships with family again, and teaches them to make drug-free decisions. That is a program where you can measure the success in the results. Results from a program like this, completely drug-free, will range from 50% to 70% success after graduation. So many other programs have success rates of 10%. As long as a person stays on the opiate replacement drug, they may stay out of jail but they can't say they are clean and sober.