Why Rehab Often Fuels Relapse Instead of Recovery

Summary

Podcast Summary: Reveal — “Why Rehab Often Fuels Relapse Instead of Recovery”

Podcast: Reveal
Host: Al Letson
Guest: Shoshana Walter, author of An American Scandal
Date: August 27, 2025

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Overview: Main Theme and Purpose

This episode dives into the failures and dangers of the American drug rehab industry, exploring how treatment centers too often harm those they're meant to help. Investigative reporter Shoshana Walter explains how profit motives, lack of regulation, outdated philosophies, and systemic racial biases shape an industry that sometimes increases, rather than decreases, relapse and overdose rates. The episode draws on Walter’s years of reporting, her Reveal series American Rehab, and her new book An American Scandal.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Troubled Origins and Workings of U.S. Rehab (03:41–08:00)

• Unpaid labor as “treatment”:
  Shoshana Walter recounts how, starting in 2017, she and colleagues uncovered a system where rehabilitation for drug offenses involved forced, unpaid labor at for-profit companies:

  “We basically stumbled across this model of rehab...operates by putting court ordered participants to work at for profit companies without pay.” (04:08, Walter)

• Historical roots:
  The model traces back to the Synanon program of the 1960s, which promoted tough-love and forced labor as part of treatment—a model which spread and now enrolls over 60,000 annually.
• Industry players:
  Examples include court-ordered rehab participants working at chicken factories, nursing homes, zoos, and refineries (05:00–06:13).

2. The Insurance–Driven Failure of 30-Day Treatment (10:07–11:44)

• Profit over care:
  Insurance reforms like the Affordable Care Act expanded coverage but incentivized short, billable treatments rather than sustained support.
• Deadlier outcomes:

  “People who complete a 30-day rehab program are much more likely to overdose and die than someone who started that rehab program and didn’t finish it.” (10:09, Walter)

• Why?
  Short-term, abstinence-style programs strip users of drug tolerance without providing follow-up support, leaving them vulnerable to relapse and fatal overdose.

3. Lived Experience: Chris Coon’s Story (11:49–15:54)

• Cycle of addiction and failed treatment:
  Chris, from Louisiana, entered a typical 30-day program paid by insurance, relapsed immediately, and was forced into an 18-month work-based, punitive rehab to avoid prison.
• Cult-like practices:

  “He was required to work sometimes 80 hours a week unpaid, in these backbreaking manual labor jobs, not getting paid anything except for a pack of cigarettes.” (13:22, Walter)

• What worked:
  Only after his family helped him access Suboxone—a medication for opioid use disorder—did he stabilize and rebuild his life.

4. Regulatory Failure and Exploitation (26:04–28:11)

• Patchwork oversight:
  Regulation varies wildly by state; even egregiously dangerous facilities can evade shutdown by exploiting loopholes.
• Chilling example:

  “People died repeatedly in this program and still it took years and years for regulators to shut that program down.” (16:04, Walter)

• Sober living homes:
  Many are unregulated, leading to unchecked abuses and further endangering patients.

5. Race, Policy, and the Two-Tiered System of “Compassion” (17:23–21:44)

• Stark contrast:
  Al Letson recalls the lack of empathy during the crack epidemic in Black neighborhoods, compared to the more sympathetic rhetoric around white opioid users (17:23–19:19).
• Shifting dynamics:
  As opioid overdose deaths drop in white communities and rise in Black and Indigenous ones, punitive policies are resurging.
• Evidence on effective approaches:

  “There’s this form of addiction treatment called contingency management, where people are rewarded for maintaining their sobriety. And that has proven to be incredibly effective...” (21:19, Walter)

6. Methadone vs. Suboxone: Stigma and Harmful Laws (23:05–25:58)

• Unequal access:
  Methadone treatment remains highly controlled, often requiring daily clinic visits. Suboxone is less burdensome but harder to access, especially for marginalized groups.
• Legal roots of stigma:
  Century-old drug laws criminalized medical maintenance treatment, chilling doctors’ willingness to treat addiction:

  “After this law was passed, ultimately, like 25,000 doctors were arrested for prescribing narcotics to people known to be addicted...that stigma has continued through all this time.” (24:08, Walter)

7. Overdose Death Trends and Persistent Epidemic (28:11–31:12)

• Why are overdose deaths down?
  The reasons are unclear—may relate to pandemic spikes, youth drug use declines, or the tragic toll of fentanyl already killing the most vulnerable.
• Limits of the metric:

  “There are millions of people...who continue to remain addicted...we’re reversing a lot of overdoses, but those people may not be leaving their addiction.” (30:24, Walter)

• Cuts to harm reduction:
  Funding for Narcan and safe treatment is being rolled back, threatening recent progress.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Treatment certainly can be a really good thing. It can be a life changing thing for people, but it also can be part of the problem.” — Shoshana Walter (00:02)
• “Why is it that judges and courts across the US are considering uncompensated labor to be a form of addiction treatment?” — Shoshana Walter (05:22)
• “He was required to work sometimes 80 hours a week unpaid, in these backbreaking manual labor jobs...” — Shoshana Walter (13:22)
• “There’s this form of addiction treatment called contingency management... and that has proven to be incredibly effective...” — Shoshana Walter (21:19)
• “Even today, doctors are allowed to prescribe Suboxone...and doctors rarely do. It’s still incredibly uncommon for doctors to provide addiction care.” — Shoshana Walter (25:26)
• “What I’ve seen again and again in my work is even when rehabs are overmedicating patients to the point of impairment, exploiting patients for billable services... they often remain in business or just apply for a new license and start again.” — Shoshana Walter (27:17)
• “There are millions of people in the United States who continue to remain addicted... the metric of overdose deaths is limited in what it can tell us.” — Shoshana Walter (30:24)

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Important Timestamps

• Origins and lucrative unpaid labor model: 03:41–08:00
• 30-day programs and insurance incentives: 10:07–11:44
• Chris Coon’s rehab experience: 11:49–15:54
• Regulatory loopholes and fatal neglect: 16:04, 26:04–28:11
• Race, policy, and public sympathy: 17:23–21:44
• Medication access, law, stigma: 23:05–25:58
• Why overdose deaths fell, and what’s missing: 28:11–31:12

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Tone and Language

The episode maintains a mixture of alarm, empathy, and analytical scrutiny. Al Letson’s personal anecdotes and Walter’s investigative storytelling ground the complex policy issues in real human experiences.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

Why Rehab Often Fuels Relapse Instead of Recovery deconstructs how America’s for-profit, under-regulated rehab industry too often betrays the people it promises to help. Deep investigative reporting and powerful personal testimonies reveal a system where short-term, punitive, and profit-driven treatments cause more harm than good—especially to vulnerable and marginalized communities. The episode is both an exposé and a call for more compassionate, evidence-based solutions.

Transcript

[A]

Treatment certainly can be a really good thing. It can be a life changing thing for people, but it also can be part of the problem. It can actually fuel relapse rates and overdose deaths rather than always providing people what they need to actually recover.

[B]

On this week's More to the story, I talk with author and journalist Shoshana Walter about why America's drug rehab industry is often failing those who need it the most. Stay with us.

[C]

Did you know you have the power to inspire future generations with the same impactful reporting you trust and believe in right now? I'm Lisa Schachter and I manage the Legacy Society program at the center for Investigative Reporting. When you include Reveal in your will or other legacy plans, you are passing along your values of truth and integrity. It won't cost you anything right now, and you don't need to be wealthy to make a difference. A gift of any size through your will or from your retirement plan, life insurance plan or other financial account can ensure that Reveal's meaningful, factual reporting continues for decades to come. For more information about making a legacy gift to Reveal or to notify us that you already have, give me a call at 415-321-1706 or send an email to giftsevielnews. Or again, that's 415-321-1706 or giftsvealnews.org Please consider creating your legacy of truth today. Thank you.

[B]

This is more to the story. Hi, I'm Al Letson. The opioid crisis has been a quiet, deadly presence in America for a quarter of a century now. Since 1999, it's claimed more than 800,000American lives. That's more than the number of Americans who died in the Civil War. But in the background, another crisis has been simmering, the often lawless patchwork of treatment centers and programs that make up America's drug rehab industry. Many of the roughly 50 million Americans who battle substance abuse rely on this under regulated for profit industry. It's exploited patients, failed to properly treat them, and even worse. Shoshana Walter has been writing about rehabs for almost a decade now, and she first began reporting about it right here at Reveal. And with me today is one of my favorite people in the universe, Shoshanna Walter. Thank you so much for coming on. You are the author of An American Scandal and you're now a reporter at the Marshall Project, but for many years you were a producer here at Reveal and I'm so glad to have you on the show.

[A]

Thank you so much for having Me.

[B]

Al so way back when, I remember now this is pre pandemic. I remember my office was right across from your desk and you and Alex, Amy, Julia were talking about rehabs and that you found this story. I specifically remember because I think we were talking about chicken farms or something like that. It just stick for some reason. Chicken farms stick in my head. Do you remember how all this got started?

[A]

Yes. You have a really good memory. So I think beginning in 2017, I teamed up with another reporter at Reveal, Amy Julia Harris, and we started looking at drug courts and diversion court programs and the treatment programs that some of these courts were sending people to. And we basically stumbled across this model of rehab that exists across the United States that operates by putting court ordered participants to work at for profit companies without pay. And so one of the first programs that we discovered, and this is what really got me going on this topic, was this program that was founded by a former poultry industry executive that was accepting court ordered participants who had been ordered there by the court for addiction treatment. They were sending these people to chicken processing plants, mostly run by Simmons, where they were making pet food for Petsmart, Rachel Ray Walmart. A ton of huge companies were getting the proceeds of this unpaid rehab labor. We found one that was sending a rehab, that was sending people to work at nursing homes, at a zoo where they were helping to dispose of dead animals, and then one called Senecor foundation that was sending people to work at Exxon and Shell oil refineries. After all these programs, it just got me thinking about how is it that in this day and age in the United States when we all seem to have accepted this idea of addiction as a disease that needs to be treated? Why is it that judges and courts across the US are considering uncompensated labor to be a form of addiction treatment? And it made me interested and curious in understanding what exactly this whole landscape looks like and if it's even working the way it's supposed to be working.

[B]

That led to you, producer and reporter Ake Sris Khandaraja and producer, editor and reporter Laura Starcheski going on the road and diving into American Rehab, which was a mini serial that Reveal put out. It's one of my favorite things that we've ever done here at Reveal. Can you tell us a little bit more about that series?

[A]

Yeah, we, you know, after we had uncovered so many of these programs at Reveal, we felt like we really had this unanswered question, like how common is this? How often is this happening? How many rehabs are like this. And where on earth does this idea of unpaid labor as a form of addiction treatment come from? And so I teamed up with Laura and Ike, and we looked at a specific program in Louisiana called the Center Corps foundation, where we had discovered people had worked at Exxon and Shell oil refineries. And we interviewed this guy named Chris who ends up being someone in my book. And we just painted this portrait of how this kind of rehab works. And we investigated the origin of these types of rehab programs all the way back to the 1960s, when a former oil salesman and someone recovering from addiction decided to create their own model of rehab community. You know, he did not like Alcoholics Anonymous. He thought people in AA could just BS each other and lie about their sobriety. So he wanted a place where people could call each other out, even scream at each other about things that they had done wrong or slip ups that they had had in their sobriety. And that was the beginning of a program called Synanon that started on the beach in California. And Synanon ended up becoming this multimillion dollar nonprofit operation that survived in part by putting participants to work unpaid, making money for the program. We ultimately found that more than 60,000 people per year go through a program like this.

[B]

So you went from looking into rehabs and addiction way back with American Rehab, and now in 2025, you are coming out with a book about it. So talk to me about, like, how the. The reporting evolved.

[A]

You know, I had an understanding that I think a lot of Americans have about the opioid epidemic, which is that it was started by this company called Purdue pharma. They manufactured OxyContin. They got a lot of people hooked. And originally, initially, the communities that were disproportionately impacted by that opioid epidemic were white communities. And in part due to that kind of, like, changing face of addiction, a different way of thinking about who was impacted by addiction, lawmakers were really starting to feel the pressure to treat addiction differently. You know, during the crack cocaine epidemic, which disproportionately impacted black communities, there was this approach of mass incarceration and punishment. And that led to a huge number of black and brown people entering the prison system. So then you fast forward to the opioid epidemic. There's kind of a totally different approach going on where lawmakers are suddenly acknowledging that addiction is a disease. It needs to be treated with compassion. It's not a moral failing. And so we need to offer treatment instead of incarceration. Over the last 25 years, we've seen Brand new, groundbreaking addiction treatment medication come out. We've seen addiction treatment vastly expanded under the Affordable Care. And treatment certainly can be a really good thing. It can be a life changing thing for people, but it also can be part of the problem. And this is what I found in the book, that it can actually fuel relapse rates and overdose deaths rather than always providing people with what they need to actually recover.

[B]

Talk me through that. How is rehab fueling people to go back to drugs? Where's the failing?

[A]

Well, we know now that people who complete a 30 day rehab program are much more likely to overdose and die than someone who started that rehab program and didn't finish it. 30 day rehab programs are the length of program that insurance companies most very often cover. So the Affordable Care act expanded insurance coverage to millions of Americans and expanded addiction treatment coverage to millions of Americans. But at the same time, it also opened the door to practices that were designed to maximize profits, often at the expense of patient care. So once the Affordable Care act came online, all these rehab programs started to proliferate and the emphasis was really on billable services. You know, what are insurance companies willing to pay for rather than what will actually help someone stay in Recovery? A 30 day rehab program where someone enters and gets sober and then leaves, places them at much higher risk of overdose death, ultimately, because once they enter rehab and get abstinent, they no longer have the tolerance for the opioid that they used to take. And so they leave rehab, they lack the support that they need to stay in recovery. They relapse. And then oftentimes that relapse can be really devastating.

[B]

You follow four characters in the book. One of them is someone named Chris. Can you tell me about him?

[A]

Yeah. Chris Coon is someone that I met while working at Reveal on American Rehab. He's from rural Louisiana. He kind of was exposed to opioids for the first time when he was 15 years old and got into, you know, a three wheeler accident trying to show off to his cousin. And he broke his ankle and took a pain pill for the first time. And that kind of set off a period of very common adolescent experimentation with drugs. And, you know, by the time he entered his 20s, he had developed an addiction to opioids and also to meth. And he entered a rehab that was paid for by his dad's insurance. It was a 30 day program. He went, he got something out of it, he left, and then he immediately relapsed. Such a common story. And, you know, not long after that relapse, he ended up going on a kind of like a drug binge with a friend. And when he woke up, he was surrounded by cops, and. And he was arrested. He went before the judge. Instead of Chris entering into a plea deal that might have sent him to prison for five years, the judge offered him the Senegor Foundation. And so Chris ended up going into this program that was then located in Baton rouge, Louisiana, for 18 months. He refers to it kind of as cult like, where he was, you know, forced to tattle on the other participants in the program. He was forced to participate in this group called the Game, which was a regular circle of participants where they would kind of scream at each other about things they might have done wrong. And he was required to work sometimes 80 hours a week unpaid, in these backbreaking manual labor jobs, not getting paid anything except for a pack of cigarettes. As a result of all that, he got injured on the job. And shortly after that, he was essentially kicked out of the program and sent back to where he came from, where he faced the possibility of prison again.

[B]

Wow. What happened with him?

[A]

So Chris went back to the court, where he faced the possibility of five years in prison in Louisiana, and the judge instead gave him probation, and he went back home. He moved in with his dad, and he had the financial and emotional support of his dad as he tried to restart his life. I mean, he had a lot of trauma from his experience at Senacor, and also this, you know, actually kind of a motivation from his experience at Senacor of he doesn't ever want to go back to a place like that again. And he was trying to restart his life. And then he had a minor operation where he was once again given pain pills. And he took one thinking he could handle it, and realized, oh, he definitely can't. So he asks parents for help, and they helped him get on Suboxone, which is considered the gold standard treatment for opioid addiction. It's a medication that kind of fills the same receptors in the brain as illicit opioids and, you know, gets rid of the cravings, gets rid of the withdrawal symptoms, and just kind of helps someone who's using illicit drugs to feel normal again. It can be very expensive. A lot of Suboxone programs accept only cash. At the time that Chris was doing this, there were some insurance programs that weren't even paying for it. And so he really needed the help of his parents, who were in a position to help him pay for this medication. And the medication truly helped him. I mean, he got on Suboxone, he went to school for welding. And now he's, he's married, he has two step kids and is living outside of Austin, Texas and doing really well.

[B]

When we come back, Shoshanna talks about how one rehab facility routinely dodged regulation even after the worst possible outcome for its patients.

[A]

People died repeatedly in this program and still it took years and years for regulators to shut that program down.

[B]

But before we get to that, I hate to say this, but the summer is over. I know you're getting those last minute trips, starting the back to school shopping. It's a busy time. But there's one small thing that you could add to your to do list that makes a big difference for us at Reveal. Tell your friends about us, give us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app and help others discover Reveal's award winning reporting. Okay, so don't go anywhere. More with my good buddy Shoshana Walter in just a moment.

[C]

Hello listener. My name is Najeeb Momini and I am a producer here at Reveal. Reveal is a nonprofit news organization and we depend on support from our listeners, listeners like you. Donate [e-mail] donate. It helps fund the stories that we tell and helps me feed my cat. So thank you.

[B]

This is more to the story. I'm Al Letson and I'm back with author and journalist Shoshana Walter. Earlier in our conversation you talked a little bit about the racial gap I grew up in, for lack of a better term, like the crack era. I never like nobody in my family was affected by it directly, but I was living in New Jersey as a kid. I moved to Florida when I was 11 years old and the neighborhood that I lived in in New Jersey was pretty much a middle class, at least in 11 year old's eyes. It was a middle class, mostly black neighborhood. Moved to Florida, the crack epidemic kind of took over. Went back to visit New Jersey. I think I was about 14 and the neighborhood looked absolutely different. I remember thinking to myself at 14 that it reminded me of something from like a zombie movie. The house that my dad had worked so hard to renovate had turned into a crack house. Everything, the neighborhood just looked so different and affected by this epidemic and the way it was talked about in the media because that drug was primarily hitting inner cities and therefore black communities. There was no empathy at all. Calling somebody a crackhead was definitely a derogatory thing. Fast forward to the opioid epidemic and the way this country looks at it is totally different. Like these people who get addicted to opioids are victims and they need to be helped. Whereas, like, people who got addicted to crack are crackheads and they are looked down at. And that's definitely a racial issue.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely, Al. I mean, everything you described is so spot on. And I think one thing that's interesting or disturbing that's going on now is now, at this point in the epidemic, overdose death rates in white communities have gone down dramatically, but they've gone up in black and indigenous communities. And as they've gone up, the rate in those communities is now higher than in white communities. As those rates in black communities have gone up, there has been kind of a resurgence of punitive punishment oriented policies. You know, there's still, I think, a general acceptance that addiction is a disease, or at least that this concept is accepted. But we're seeing new laws passed that, that require mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl dealing, for example, and crackdowns on homeless encampments in cities. And all these policies that will lead to more incarceration and more punishment that will once again disproportionately impact communities of color.

[B]

Does punishment ever work?

[A]

That's a good question. I mean, I've definitely talked to a lot of people who feel like they found their motivation for recovery when they entered jail or prison, and they were just like, I don't want this for myself. But what studies have also shown is that especially for people who have fewer resources, particularly black people who are court ordered into treatment, it doesn't work as well as offering better opportunities, more positive alternatives like educational opportunities, financial incentives. There's this form of addiction treatment called contingency management, where people are rewarded for maintaining their sobriety. And that has proven to be incredibly effective for helping someone enter and maintain their recovery. So I would say these types of addiction treatment drug policies are far more effective for many people in this country than punishment is.

[B]

So I have a family member who has addiction issues, and they were on methadone for a very long time. And methadone in itself felt like. I don't know, I just remember feeling like it was another form of addiction, another chain, because my family member would have to go to a clinic at least once or twice a week to get his refill of methadone. And, you know, it was a constant thing, like at least once or twice a week, and then they'd give you the methadone there, but only enough methadone to last, like, so long, and then you've got to come back. And I remember very clearly that Suboxone was what he wanted to get on, but it was really hard for him to get on Suboxone. And, you know, grown man didn't want to get into his business. Do not know exactly why it was hard for him to get to Suboxone. All I know is that, like, Suboxone, from the way he would tell it, means that he wouldn't have to come to the clinic every week, that he could get basically a prescription and, you know, maybe he's going every two weeks. Does that experience, like, line up with what your reporting has told you?

[A]

Yes, that's like a perfect, like, prime example of this kind of like two unequal systems of treatment that we have going on in the United States. Methadone clinics really got started in earnest in the 1970s, and that was a complaint about them from the get go. Like, people who take methadone, which can be very effective. It can be a very effective treatment. It's similar in some ways to buprenorphine or Suboxone, but it's also highly regulated, highly surveilled. So many rules. And someone who's undergoing methadone treatment has to go regularly to these clinics that may not be in super convenient places. And some people have to go every single day. And that is itself, you know, a tether that prevents a lot of people from being able to get on with their lives. It's like a chain around your ankle keeping you in that space. So the reason why methadone programs are the way that they are dates back, like over a hundred years to the nation's first federal drug law. And what that drug law did, it was passed in 1914 during kind of a very different period of drug crisis, opioid epidemic. And it did a lot of things, but one of the things that it ultimately did was make it illegal for doctors to prescribe narcotics to people known to be addicted. And that included doctors who were prescribing morphine or opium or other drugs to people who were addicted to them as a way of maintaining them, making sure that they felt okay, or as a way of preventing their withdrawal symptoms, or even as a way of treating their addiction. So after this law was passed, ultimately, like 25,000 doctors were arrested for prescribing narcotics to people known to be addicted, many of them for treatment purposes. And that experience, doctors being arrested, being punished for treating addicted people, or providing medical care for addicted people has really stuck with us in the United States. I mean, even today, doctors are allowed to prescribe Suboxone to someone, to their patients, and doctors rarely do. It's still incredibly uncommon for doctors to provide addiction care to their patients. So this law and the stigma that the law created has continued through all this time.

[B]

What sort of regulations exist for the rehab industry in the US it's totally.

[A]

Different state to state. Each state regulates it differently. But in places like Florida and California, which have really become kind of like the rehab meccas of the United States, the industry has grown so immense, it's really difficult for regulators to keep up. And oftentimes when issues are discovered at rehab programs, there's not much that regulators are doing. You know, there's one program that I cover extensively in the book in California where people were literally dying after going to this rehab and being given a cocktail of strong narcotic medications that can easily cause overdose that were not even prescribed to them. A doctor had not even prescribed these prescription medications to them. People died repeatedly in this program. And still it took years and years for regulators to shut that program down. And ultimately they didn't technically shut it down. That rehab operator kept on getting new licenses, and it was eventually deluge of lawsuits and insurance and expensive insurance policies that led him to back out of the industry. So what I've seen again and again in my work is even when rehabs are overmedicating patients to the point of impairment, exploiting patients for billable services, like making thousands upon thousands off of urine drug screens, they often remain in business or just apply for a new license and start again. And what a lot of rehab programs are also doing is starting sober living homes, which do not require licensure at all in the vast majority of the country. And so rehab participants will go to this licensed treatment program during the day and then come back to an unlicensed sober living home at night. And that's where also a lot of deaths and exploitative practices are occurring without any oversight at all.

[B]

Drug overdose deaths are actually down in the US Specifically. Why do you think that is?

[A]

People who research it and know far more about that than I do still don't fully understand it. From what I understand, there could be a number of reasons for this. I mean, overdose death rates really escalated during the pandemic. So the numbers that we're seeing now are kind of at near pre pandemic levels. They're still not as far down as that. So we may just be returning to where we were at before the pandemic, which was still devastating, you know, totally devastating. More than 80,000 people died last year of drug overdoses. So that may be what's happening. I think there's some other theories that have been circulated. You know, younger people are using drugs less, they're taking fewer risks. Another really disturbing theory is that a lot of people who marginalized people who used fentanyl have basically died off because fentanyl is so much more deadly than Heroin was, than OxyContin was. You know, maybe there's just fewer people who are now dying because they're already gone. And the other theory is that harm reduction services like Narcan, overdose reversal drugs have really helped people too, by bringing people back from overdose rather than allowing them to pass away. If that's the case, we might start to see some of them go away because funding for overdose reversal medications has been cut, treatment access has been cut. There's a lot of gains that we've made that may be related to these policies that are now starting to be eradicated. So there's concern out there that we'll start to see overdose deaths go up again. And then I think also about the fact that, yes, overdose deaths have gone down and that is like something to be really happy about. But I think we also have to be cautious about our optimism around that because, you know, there are millions of people in the United States who continue to remain addicted. And, you know, we're reversing a lot of overdoses, but those people may not be leaving their addiction, which means that they're still experiencing the devastation that addiction brings to them and to their families. And so I think that the metric of overdose deaths is limited in what it could tell us. You know, there's still an addiction epidemic going on. And until we have a better system for treating that addiction, we're still going to have this problem with us.

[B]

Yeah. Shoshana Walter, author of An American Scandal and my good friend, it is so lovely to see you. Thank you for coming onto the show.

[A]

So good to see you too, Al. Thank you so much.

[B]

That was Shoshana Walters, staff writer at the Marshall Project and author of An American Scandal. If you like this episode, then you should definitely, definitely check out the series where it all began. It's called American Rehab. You can listen to all eight episodes in our reveal feed right now. We'll leave a link in our show notes. Lastly, just a reminder, we are listener supported and that means listeners like you, you can help us thrive by making a gift today. Just go to revealnews.org gift again, that's revealnews.org gift and thank you. This episode was produced by Josh sanburn and Carl McGurk. Allison. Brett Myers edited the show theme music and engineering helped by Fernando, my man. Yo, Arruda. And Jay Breezy. Mr. Jim Briggs. I'm Al Letson. And you know, let's do this again next week. This is more to the story.

[A]

From prx.