SEATTLE, Washington - You can't spend more than about 30 minutes listening to KJR-AM in Seattle without hearing commercials for Schick Shadel Hospital, in which the alleged Godfather of Northwest Rock & Roll, Pat O'Day, tells you that the Hospital can cure you of alcohol dependence in 10 days.
In some of the commercials, O'Day says that the treatment is "as simple as a paper clip" so I checked the website. Holy crap, it sounds like the Ludovico Treatment, which I thought was more or less fiction. It's real, but based on Google searches it does not seem all that popular today, and Schick Shadel may be one of the few places that's really gung-ho about it.
Its real name is Aversion Therapy, and Schick Shadel uses it for both alcohol and drug issues. From their website:
* Emetine is used for alcohol counter conditioning unless not viable due to individual patient medical limitations.
* Faradic counter conditioning is used for prescriptive drug, marijuana, cocaine and nicotine aversions, and for alcohol aversion if an individual patient's medical limitations preclude the use of emetine.
"Emetine" therapy is chemical inducement of nausea, and "Faradic" therapy is a kind way of saying "electric shock" therapy. In fact, the heyday of Aversion Therapy seems to have been the 1960s, when electric shock conditioning was in vogue as a way to "cure" homosexuality. Of course, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declared that homosexuality was not a "mental illness" - sorry about all the electric shocks, fellas!
Yep, Pat, as simple as a paper clip.
2 comments:
I have a web site dedicated to the dissemination of Faradism or faradic counter conditioning. The portrayal of the wire head is not the faradic aversion therapy that got me of off crack cocaine in 1 day alcohol in 2 and alcohol in 3. My web is an explanation on my experience with a similar psychotronic application. Roberto carbajal http://faradism.tripod.com
Aversion therapy has the same patient retention rate during treatment as any other detox facility. It's not a torture chamber.
Addiction is hard to treat because of the way neural networks work- anything that the addicted patient has associated with drugs (be it socializing, coping mechanisms for stress, people, situations, etc) all activate the circuits that reward using the drug.
Most detox facilities have a 5-50% success rate, a 70% success rate shows just how lacking other therapies are.
Finally, drop guilty by association logic: aversion therapy for addiction is based on hard science, the same process that proved homosexuality isn't a choice nor detrimental to the individual or the children of same-sex couples.
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