On Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked at rehab, a.k.a., “the most common place to go after hitting rock bottom other than Dave & Buster’s.”
According to Oliver, rehab is where people go to address drug or alcohol addiction, but aside from that “the word rehab is so broadly defined as to be close to meaningless.” Now that addiction is recognized as a disease, and not a moral failing, it has evolved into a $35 billion industry with rehab facilities across the country with names like Promises, Passages, and Milestones, and other “names that sound like perfumes worn exclusively by widows.”
Unfortunately, according to Oliver, there is no set definition of rehab, no federal standards for counseling practices or rehab practices, and many rehab facilities don’t involve “evidence-based care” at…
