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Leighton Woodhouse | RealClearInvestigations
After nine years as a homeless drug addict in Los Angeles, Jared Klickstein finally checked himself into a drug treatment center. Unlike the program he had gone to six years before, which had hot tubs, acupuncture, and trips to the beach, this one, in North Hollywood, was deadly serious about personal responsibility. Clients kept a strict schedule. They did chores. They scrubbed toilets. “No hot tubs,” Klickstein said.
Most important, they couldn’t use drugs. “If you use, they kick you out,” he said. “There’s consequences.”
It took him two attempts, but Klickstein, now 33, finally got clean. Four and a half years later, he’s independent, employed, and emotionally stable. “I was a person that you would see on one of these videos, screaming with blood and shit all over them,” he said. “And now I’m not.”
Klickstein attributes his success to the North Hollywood program’s emphasis on sobriety and accountability. “Without sobriety, there is no mental or emotional stability for me and most other drug addicts, meaning homelessness was inevitable,” he said. “Half measures and coddling do not work. Period.”
But tough-love centers like the one that turned Klickstein’s life around are becoming harder to come by. The idea that you have to quit drugs to recover from addiction has become old-fashioned, and treatment centers that insist on abstinence are disappearing. In California, changes in state law have made it virtually...
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