New Recovery Center Uses—Yep—Pot to Treat Addiction
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New Recovery Center Uses—Yep—Pot to Treat Addiction

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New Treatment Center Uses Marijuana in Its Recovery ProgramWhen I went to rehab for alcoholism, “controlled drinking” wasn’t on the menu. Quite the opposite. The alcoholic in me, though, would have been thrilled to hear that cabernet was part of treatment. I would’ve given anything for that. Turns out, this fantasy wasn’t too far from reality.

According to a recent LA Weekly story, there’s a new treatment program that’s threatening to upend everything we understand about addiction recovery. A brand-new rehab facility, cheekily named High Sobriety, is attacking addiction by offering marijuana to help addicts and alcoholics come down. Naturally, the facility’s fighting-fire-with-fire approach has just as many riled-up critics as it does recovery-seeking addicts intrigued by its controversial, outside-the-box methods.

Fire With Fire

Aside from the occasional outlier, most treatment centers thrive on no-questions-asked abstinence. High Sobriety, on the other hand, has an all-in approach that offers cannabis to help patients detox from alcohol and drugs. It’s as unique as it is unsettling to a recovery community that’s desperately trying to get away from mind-altering substances in the first place. According to the facility’s website, its primary goal is “to eliminate the risk of death from drug use,” citing alcohol as the number-one killer among them all. “Cannabis has no known lethal dose,” the site contends. “The simple truth is eliminating drugs with a lethal dose and using a drug with no lethal dose is a massive improvement, life improving, and life saving.” High Sobriety even claims that marijuana isn’t really the gateway drug it’s commonly billed as, calling it an “exit drug.” That, of course, remains to be seen.

Located in West Los Angeles, the clinic operates on the belief that the mainstream 12-step treatment is broken—an outdated concept that only works 25% of the time, thanks to “an antiquated, clinically misaligned, and nonscientific lens.” That’s where High Society comes in. They’re targeting the remaining 75% who’ve been “failed” by conventional treatment, offering alternative programs such harm reduction, drug replacement therapy, risk minimization, Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) and, yes, weed. (The site also offers up studies and findings that make a medical case for cannabis in recovery.) If nothing else, the entire program seems less a reaction to 12-step work as it does an indictment of old methodologies and ways of thinking when it comes to addiction treatment.

Whose Idea Was This?

High Sobriety is the brainchild of Joe Schrank, who has been highly visible in the recovery community over the last few years. “Abstinent from drugs and alcohol for more than 20 years and [someone]who once worked as a counselor at Promises Malibu,” Schrank was also the subject of a 2011 feature in The New York Times. The feature was smitten with Schrank’s Loft 107—one of New York City’s very first sober-living homes. Otherwise known as “Williamsburg House,” Loft 107 is situated in the middle of Willamsburg, a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood that’s equal parts self-aware hipster and disaffected youth. Aside from its loose-yet-regimented recovery program, Loft 107 offers an equally trendy décor: exposed brick, hardwood floors, carefully chosen artwork and plush Restoration Hardware furniture throughout. It seems more like an arts-collective hangout where poets meet than the high-end recovery complex it is.

After Loft 107, Schrank continued to catch the media’s attention, working on a proposed spin-off of A&E’s Intervention as well as public speaking—which included a TEDx talk about addiction. Schrank is easygoing, levelheaded and lucid—all of which force even the hardest skeptics to sit up and take notice of the otherwise-insane-sounding High Sobriety.

How could someone possibly think this approach would work? And in Brooklyn, of all places? Because it’s not California, Schrank said at the time, charging West Coast treatment centers with being “disingenuous” and “superficial” (as opposed to the gritty authenticity of Brooklyn’s recovery scene). Flash forward a few years, and Schrank has changed his tune, customizing a center specifically for the West Coast recovery community. It’s just as authentic and honest as Loft 107, Schrank believes: High Sobriety celebrates the freedom and positive energy of the West Coast as much as it does the belief in addicts finding genuine recovery when they ordinarily wouldn’t.

Does It Have a Future?

High Sobriety is adamant that marijuana can be instrumental in detoxing patients, “helping with discomfort, insomnia, and flu-like symptoms associated with the withdrawal process, reducing or eliminating the need for other drugs.” Following an individual’s detox, medical staff then draw up plans and recovery goals to ensure long-term success. Not so fast, critics say. For one, there’s zero research to support the medical benefits of marijuana in an addiction recovery environment. There’s also the problem of using substances to fight other substances. Still, that’s not stopping High Sobriety from keeping its doors open. In some ways, Schrank’s experiment with High Sobriety might yield the very case studies and research that critics are asking for.

One of Schrank’s former Promises co-workers, Dr. Howard Samuels, told LA Weekly that he’s “in a state of shock” over the existence of High Sobriety. “We all know in the treatment field that weed is such a dangerous drug for the emotional stability of our youth,” he said, lamenting its use in treatment. Dr. Lara Ray, an addiction research professor at UCLA, echoed those sentiments in the same article, saying that when it comes to applying marijuana in treatment, there’s no scientific basis for it. In fact, she argues that it’s “very counter-intuitive, and potentially quite dangerous” to prescribe marijuana to any patient—especially ones who are already struggling with substance abuse. “This is really the No. 1 fact about our field that worries me,” Ray told LA Weekly. “The treatments out there, for the most part, don’t represent the science…[and they’re]not well-regulated.”

As some addicts embrace the new treatment method, many critics will be paying close attention to see whether decades’ worth of research will either hold true—or go up in smoke.

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About Author

Paul Fuhr is an addiction recovery writer whose work has appeared in The Literary Review, The Live Oak Review, The Sobriety Collective and InRecovery Magazine, among others. He is the author of the alcoholism memoir “Bottleneck.” He's also the creator and co-host of "Drop the Needle," a podcast about music and recovery. Fuhr lives in Columbus, Ohio with his family and their cats, Dr. No and Goldeneye.