It's Time to Stop Kicking People Out of Addiction Treatment

Interventions by professional helpers that are later recognized as ineffective or even harmful have a long and colorful history. Some of the most widely practiced of such interventions have left later generations pondering, "What on earth were they thinking?" Lectures on the history of addiction treatment stir feelings of enlightened condescension amidst tales of treating morphine addiction with cocaine and other such idiocies, but occasionally a conference attendee asks the tough question: "How will the current era of addiction treatment be judged in the future?" And, of course, that is the rub, because it is so difficult to clearly see our own professional miscues and mistakes without the benefit of historical hindsight. This essay explores one practice-administratively discharging clients from addiction treatment-that we suspect will be judged harshly by historians of the not so distant future.