Maia,
Thank you very much for your response. Is there any professional psycological body that I could refer to to find papers condemning or condoning this type of treatment? I'd like to get more information in general also. How do I get your book?
My friend is a 48 year old PHD in clinical psycology, who lost his practice, his money, his life through a lifelong addiction problem, which over the last several years turned into a crack addiction. After all the money was gone, he began selling crack to high end customers for one guy in Manhattan. He was arrested after 3 months with a large amount of crack. He had sold to an undercover cop three times. That was three months after he began selling the crack. I hadn't seen him in about 8 years, but I understand at that point he was an end stage addict and probably close to death. After his arrest (three felonies in a state with the draconian Rockefeller drug laws) he was looking at 8 to 15 years. His father (a wealthy, retired lawyer) put up a considerable sum of money to get him into the treatment program instead of prison. The logic was that an affluent,educated white Jewish guy was not going to have a good time of it in prison. Well, he ended up getting the mandated treatment, for 6 months in residence and a couple of years of aftercare. Over the year and a half of postponements since his arrest, he had immersed himself in the AA, NA communtiy and had earned his one year coin. He was very motivated and energized by the meetings and the communtiy aspect. We renewed contact and I gave him a job selling organic vegetables on Saturday at my farm stand in a Greenmarket in the Village. He positively thrived doing that, speaking to people and learning about the organic farming I do in Upstate New York. When he finally got the treatment, he, his family and friends considered it a great victory. He would avoid a prison term and get real help. Well, the scarce contact I've had with him (His mother, father and myself all share his letters) has been positively frightening. It is difficult to even begin to understand the nature of this so-called treatment. Things like people getting "shot-down" and carrying around an empty dry-cleaning suit bag. Or the daily confrontations which are meant to be sadistic. My friend informed me that his counselor SCREAMS at him because I write to him once a week. I now write every 10 days. It all sounds so insane, that I MUST make some sense of it. I find it extremely odd that there is no explaination of this type of treatment anywhere easily accessable. I've tried google searches etc. This is the first real thing I've found.
Sorry to ramble on. I'm so disturbed by this. Thank you for your time and help,
Sincerely,
Jessica