I found it interesting that even doctors are not immune to treatment abuse. Talbott Recovery Center is a place where doctors with substance abuse problems were sent to "recover."
Here is the report of one of the doctors who testified against Talbott about threats, isolation, lack of real assessment, AA indoctrination, and so on:
I am not sure how many docs testified because I was only there one day, but I met three on the day I was there. Witnesses were not allowed to sit in on the testimony of others. Witnesses were protected from the court reporters by being introduced as "the doctor from New York" or the "psychiatrist from Virginia." One of the doctors I met brought his wife. She had been told by Talbott that she better do something to make her husband stay there, or the next time she saw him he would be dead. As I recall he left TRC anyway and both of them testified.
The other doc I met was critical because Talbott maintained that he never threatened anyone's professional license. But he had written in this guy's inpatient chart that he would take his license! The guy left TRC after a very harassing session by counselors. None of the other patients dared to interfere to stop the abuse because of possible punishments such as extensions of stay, loss of privileges, or increased laboratory or clinical studies which cost money.
Other testimony was about the lack of medical supervision. Charts were signed off by TRC doctors the patients never met. One of the best witnesses Masters had was said to be Talbott himself whose testimony the jury readily saw through. Master's insurance ran out, if I recall correctly, and Talbott's business office was discussing getting a loan from Masters' retirement account. Masters was a good plaintiff because he was sent there, not for drinking but by the agent of the state's medical group, PRN (Physicians' Recovery Network), because Masters wrote too many narcotic prescriptions, not because of drinking. When TRC could not find a problem with his prescribing narcotics for his patients nor with taking them himself, they got him to admit to drinking each evening and said he could not leave until he completed treatment.
Instead of an evaluation, all new patients joined right in with mandatory AA meetings and, in rooms with too few chairs, the new patients got to sit on the floor while Talbott explained the "power of the group." An important point at the trial was that the indoctrination into AA and loudly confessing to being an alcoholic began on admission, before the four day evaluation was completed! In other words, it was a forgone conclusion that you were going to stay or lose your license because you started right out with treatment.
You mentioned TMRC vs TRC. That stood for Talbott Marsh Recovery Campus before Marsh dropped out. No wonder legal action has been so slow, in addition to the threats against licenses.... Marsh is a local JUDGE.
There is much more... no visitors allowed? unless you sign up for the family program ... which costs $. No weekends away from TRC unless the group approves and then only 2 or 3 weekends in four months. No reading of recovery material that was not AA /12-step, no reading of medical journals etc. No making of close friends or you would be separated. Failure to participate in AA meant expulsion ... which meant loss of license.
It continues to amaze me to talk to law students -- college
graduates all and smarter than the average bear -- who will
seriously tell me about how dangerous mj is and how it
destroys the lives of those who use it and who, in the
very next sentence, will tell me how they and their
friends -- now CPAs, engineers, med students -- used
pot regularly through high school and college. And
they don't see the contradiction between these statements.
We're not just talking ignorance here -- we are talking
deep down, serious, religious indoctrination.
--Buford C. Terrell, Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law
