oms commonly last from 30 to 90 days.
According to Rawson and Ling (1991), the traditional treatment approaches offered for treatment of heroin addiction were developed during the 1950s and 1960s and then given more definition by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) during the 1970s. The authors state that these traditional methods are of four basic types: (1) Therapeutic communities (TCs); (2) methadone maintenance clinics; (3) outpatient drug-free programs; and (4) university-affiliated research centers. Each of these is discussed below.
Therapeutic Communities. De Leon (1986) has stated that the therapeutic community is the foundation stone of drug addiction treatment. Developed almost exclusively for the treatment of heroin addiction, therapeutic strategies offered by Therapeutic Communities are psychological in orientation and commonly emphasize aggressive encounters between addicts and counselors as well as tough discipline. In one of the earliest therapeutic communities serving as a model for even modern residential centers (Synanon), the goal was said to be that of providing addicts with a highly structured life-style within which they could be effectively taught drug abstinence, honesty, self-reliance and personal responsibility (De Leon, 1986).
Rawson and Ling (1991) report that the central assumption of Therapeutic Communities is the perspective that in order for an addict to fully recover, he or she needs to be completely removed from their daily environment and, instead, immersed in a treatment setting. In this setting, the old addictive personality is peeled away and new values, attitudes, and behaviors are taught.
According to Rawson and Ling, research shows some success for Therapeutic Communities but this success rate is almost exclusively limited to certain patient types. These patient types tend to be long-term addicts with some history of criminal behavior who are living alone and are moti...