Rehab

An American Scandal

“Rehab is propulsively plotted, meticulously researched, and told with an authority that is both heartfelt and hard-won.

A thorough critique of the so-called treatment industry and a playbook for real recovery.”

—Beth Macy

Best-selling author of “Dopesick” and “Raising Lazarus”

“With fierce compassion and meticulous reporting, Shoshana Walter gives dignity and depth to people too often discarded by a system that claims to help them. Rehab exposes a shadowy industry where profit comes before people, and treatment is too often a cover for exploitation. This is a landmark investigation — and a powerful call for change.”

—Gabrielle Glaser

Best-selling author of “Her Best-Kept Secret” and “American Baby”

“Such profound reporting. So deeply empathic. And at times just plain enraging.

In this openhearted, heartrending book, Shoshana Walter tells the remarkable stories of four individuals fighting an utterly broken drug rehab industry.”

—Alex Kotlowitz

Best-selling author of “There Are No Children Here” and “An American Summer”

"A nuanced and deeply reported exposé of America’s $53 billion addiction-treatment industry and how it harms all of us."

—Kirkus Reviews

"Through four vividly reported, heartrending stories, Shoshana Walter diagnoses the failures of America’s reaction to its drug problem — unjust policies, unregulated rehabs and sober houses, and a so-called 'system' that makes it almost impossible for people to get better. This is eye-opening, necessary reading for a society in crisis.”

—Robert Kolker

Best-selling author of “Hidden Valley Road”

“Rehab is a beautifully woven and deftly reported deep dive into a side of the opioid crisis that has too often skirted public scrutiny. Shoshana Walter’s debut is an intricate and urgent investigation into the systems that are supposed to heal — but often harm — those struggling with opioid addiction, told with a journalist’s rigor and with immense heart.”

—Keri Blakinger

Author of “Corrections in Ink”

About the Book

For decades, our country’s main solution to the drug crisis has been rehab. So why hasn’t it worked? The answer is that in America, anyone can get addicted, but only certain people get a real chance to recover. Amid high rates of overdose death, lawmakers’ default response is to punish, while rehabs across the country exploit patients for profit and fail to provide the resources they need to actually recover. We’ve heard a great deal about Big Pharma’s role in foisting the opioid crisis upon America, but, until now, we’ve heard little about the other side of this epidemic—a treatment system that often fuels relapse instead of recovery.

In this propulsive, narrative-driven exposé, Shoshana Walter follows four people through the underbelly of the treatment industry, exposing the failures and missteps in our government’s response to the crisis.

We follow a white, middle-class kid from Louisiana who enters a rehab that forces him to perform backbreaking unpaid labor at chemical plants and oil refineries. A black mom from Philadelphia who gets forced prayer and jail time instead of treatment. A grandmother in Los Angeles who seeks justice for her own son’s overdose death by obsessively rooting out corruption in the for-profit rehab industry. And an Indiana doctor who tries to treat addicted patients but instead is arrested and jailed by the DEA.

Together, these stories illustrate the pitfalls of a uniquely American system that too often fails to meet the needs of people with addiction, contributing to a deadly cycle of relapse and overdose. They also offer insight into how we might fix that system and save lives.