Rehab Redux

There's a lot going on in the world of the addiction rehabilititation these days, Lindsay Lohan news aside. In "Rehab Reality Check," Newsweek reports on competing strategies in the imperfect science of addiction treatment and a forthcoming paradigm shift in the industry.

It notes that given the high rate of relapse (less than a third of alcoholics are dry a year after rehab), treatment centers are now competing with varying approaches to addiction recovery. Increasingly common are programs which allow patients to hold on to cell phones and the other distractions of daily life traditionally abstained from during treatment in order to maintain aspects of the normal lives patients will return to after treatment. Meanwhile, cognitive behavior and motivational therapies with an emphasis on self-esteem are popping up to replace humble 12-step programs.

The aforementioned "paradigm shift" won't be the result of these ultimately minor alterations, however, but the shifting focus of addiction therapy from psychology to psychiatry, a shift that research shows to be looming ever closer.

Two weeks ago, researchers announced they had identified the region of the brain tied to smoking addiction. Almost two-thirds of subjects who had injured this region reported immediately losing the desire to smoke completely. Bupropion, the antidepressant marketed as Welbutrin, is already available to ease smoking cessation under the name Zyban. Topamax, an epilepsy drug, may also help balance high glutamate levels in the brains of addicts. Meanwhile, even forty-year-old studies on alcoholics who gave up drinking after a single dose of LSD have garnered attention aside the race to develop effective alcoholism drugs.

Addiction treatment thus seems bound for the same imperfect, experimental and heavily debated path as antidepressant therapy. However, given the high relapse rates of therapy alone, imperfect doesn't sound so bad.

Read more: Rehab Reality Check