POSTCARD PRETTY The "Mountainview" house and the swimming pool at Passages, a rehab center in Ma... ... Having a Great Detox..
IN the weeks before Tara Conner handed over her crown as Miss USA, she talked to television reporters about her stay at a treatment center for drug addiction and alcoholism. At the insistence of Donald Trump , an owner of the beauty competition, Ms. Conner had sought treatment at the Caron center in Wernersville, Pa., a former resort hotel set on a pastoral 110 acres.
Taking in her ebullience, and her glossy good looks, a viewer might have been forgiven for craving a bit of whatever it was that Ms. Conner was having. She is, after all, but one in a coterie of high-profile personalities to have recently undergone well-publicized stays in substance abuse programs that have, to all appearances, less in common with traditional bare-bones detox centers than they do with a luxury spa or resort.
Less than a decade ago, a stint in rehab was assumed to be a body- and soul-wrenching experience. A trip to even an elite facility like the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., was sufficiently shaming to keep under wraps — the psychic equivalent of a week in the stocks. Today a sojourn at a boutique establishment like Promises in Malibu, Calif., where until last week Britney Spears was tucked away, is openly discussed and in some quarters glamorized as a hip, if costly, refuge for the gilded set.
No one seriously disputes that drug addiction and alcoholism are grave and potentially life-threatening. But among devotees of networks like E! Entertainment or the readers of People, which report obsessively on rehab, there is no escaping the conclusion that rehabilitation programs have become a pampering hostelry for the privileged classes, some of whose members bounce in and out like tennis balls.
There are 8,000 programs claiming to treat substance abuse in the United States, according to the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University . Only a fraction are short-term residential programs, which can cost $25,000 to $80,000 for a recommended one-month stay. That price, their directors say, covers intensive treatment, with some establishments having as many as 10 counselors and therapists per patient. As health insurance coverage of residential treatment has declined, the programs have courted an affluent, lustrous clientele, in large part by touting lavish appointments. Some seem to be promote recovery as a luxury holiday.
Members of glamour industries like fashion, film and publishing have been quick to pick up, and propagate, the message. Earlier this month Us Weekly published a feature laid out like a glossy travel brochure, portraying treatment as something akin to a visit to a five-star hotel.
To those in the serious business of recovery, such a position is willfully naïve, at best a double-edged sword. The fanfare surrounding celebrities helps take the disgrace out of treatment, Doug Tieman, the director of the Caron center, acknowledged. But it also fosters the impression that “a daily massage or riding a horse is necessary to recovery.” Caron offers both.
William Cope Moyers, the vice president for external affairs at Hazelden in Center City, Minn., and the author of “Broken” (Viking, 2006), an addiction memoir, said the tendency of equating recovery with rest and relaxation trivializes a serious illness.
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