I received a reply from a Calgary doctor and politician regarding AARC. It was profoundly absurd and quite sad coming from a medical professional:
"I have reviewed the material you sent and have certainly concerns about the policies and procedures at AARC which I am now pursuing. I will be discussing it with various people in the addictions/mental health field so I have not ignored this new information.
I also have several people in my immediate circle who believe their child's life was hanging by a thread and was saved. This is not a 'black and white' issue."
The notion that a doctor would accept the claim that someone whose life was "hanging by a thread" was saved by undergoing a thought reform process overseen by a former phys-ed teacher and guidance counsellor is beyond ridiculous. Nobody's life is hanging by a thread when they show up at AARC. The people undergoing amateur "intakes" at AARC are not suffering organ failure nor cardiac arrest nor any other condition that poses an immediate threat to life. Most people who abuse drugs stop on their own, and even those who don't, generally live for a long time. The claim that AARC is saving lives is utterly ridiculous. Undergoing AARC's indoctrination process does however, seem to relate to a significant reduction in life expectancy.
The mortality rate for people in the age cohort of AARC "graduates" is .92 per thousand. The AARC death rate is at least 32.5 per thousand. About ten percent of the population display the symptoms of "substance use disorder". If every death could be attributed to substance abuse, then we could expect 9.2 deaths per thousand, or a third of the death rate among AARC survivors. However, substance abuse in the Canadian population is the cause of less than ten percent of deaths in Canada. So an expected mortality rate among AARC survivors would be .92 deaths per thousand. Which means that the AARC death rate is well over thirty times that expected amongst those displaying symptoms of substance use disorder.
