I look back at the dismal statistics I was given years ago by a nurse about the success rates for rehab of meth addicts—single-digit success. I understand that it’s unrealistic to think that many addicts will stay sober forever after one or two or three or however many tries at sobriety, but maybe the more meaningful statistic is this, related by one of the lecturers at a rehab: “More than half of the people who enter rehab are sober ten years out, which doesn’t mean that they haven’t been in and out of sobriety.”
In the Beautiful Boy movie, actor Timothy Hutton plays a researcher modeled after researchers in the book. As I tried to figure out how to treat Nic’s addiction, I asked the directors and admissions people at treatment programs about their success rates for treating addicted patients. As I write in the book, I was given exaggerated numbers that I later learned were made up – yes, I was lied to. The movie repeats the more realistic number I repeated in the book: the success rate of treatment of meth addiction is in the single digits. It’s gotten somewhat better since then. As bad as things are ten years since Beautiful Boy was published, there and new and more successful treatment options and the success rates are higher, but only for people who are lucky enough to get into good treatment programs and work with good addiction doctors. One in ten people who need treatment get any. And of those who do, few get good – what scientists call evidence-based treatments. For example, if people addicted to opioids are given addiction medications like buprenorphine, they’re far more likely to stay sober. If medications are combined with other proven therapies the success rates are higher still. Good treatment works.
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