Don't Listen to Quacks, Lindsay -- And That Includes Many People who Claim to be Experts on Addiction

The New York Post ran a full page ad today for an addiction rehab program, with the banner headline, "Don't Die, Lindsay," suggesting that "It's time to try a medical treatment" for her addictions.

What the ad doesn't mention is that this so-called "medical" treatment has actually not been proven effective and is experimental. For more on the exaggerated claims coming from the Prometa method that the ad promotes, see here.

This is just one more example of why we need some sort of "FDA' for behavioral health care. Right now, anyone can say anything about the effectiveness of their treatments for medical and psychiatric disorders so long as they aren't using medications. Right now, any behavioral treatment -- whether it be standing on your head or being whipped, chained or starved -- can claim "80 percent success rates" and get enthusiastic media support as soon as it presents a few anecdotes of success.

Patients need to beware: nothing in the addictions field (other than the medications buprenorphine and methadone) has had to prove itself safe and effective to any kind of medical authority before it was foisted on unsuspecting addicts and sold to them and their families as a sure thing. And many of these alleged cures have been harmful, even fatal.

The 2000 book I co-wrote with Dr. Joseph Volpicelli, Recovery Options: The Complete Guide: How You and Your Loved Ones Can Treat Alcohol and Other Drug Addictions and Anne Fletcher's Sober for Good (which only covers alcohol) remain the only two books that actually use the research to guide patients to the best treatments for them. All the rest continue to promote the same old, same old -- either 12 steps are the only way or 12 steps suck, without giving a full perspective on the data.

Unfortunately, caveat emptor is key in addiction treatments -- so don't believe anything unless someone can show you peer-reviewed, replicated data to back that claim.