The Treatment of Drug Addiction: Toward New Models

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Abstract
Drug addiction treatment programs based on an individual model of addiction (biochemical or psychological) are all too often ineffective, or result in undesirable consequences because they fail to deal with the social context of addiction. A contextual model of drug addiction provides the basis for a social treatment strategy within which addicts are assimilated into a new social context which provides a network of associations, drug-free territories for human relationships and the opportunity to learn interactional and interpersonal skills. The more specific requirements of a treatment program based upon this contextual model are described in this paper. Phoenix House, a drug addiction treatment program in New York City, has developed an organization which embodies many features of this social model. Treatment efforts are always based on a model of disorder, its characteristics, and its amenability to specific interventions.

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