Fourth in a regular series. See Dear Gov. Newsom: People are dying in the Rehab Riviera. Do something, Dear Gov. Newsom: Their daughter’s been swallowed by California’s rehab monster and How did Frankie Taylor overdose in a state-licensed addiction treatment center?
Dear Gov. Newsom: Today we’ll take a break from harrowing tales of tragedy and death in California’s (poorly regulated, private-pay, 12-step based, insurance-money fueled) addiction treatment system to visit with Dr. Walter Ling, a neuropsychiatrist who’s worked in addiction medicine for nearly as long as you’ve been alive.
Please listen to what he has to say. For thousands of people, it’s a matter of life and death.
Ling has the remarkable gift of clarity, frequently quotes his mother’s wisdom, has an infectious optimism — and will be the first to tell you that his formidable foray into addiction treatment was entirely by accident. The plan was simply to finish neurology and psychiatry training at Washington University in St. Louis and return to the Chulalongkorn University Medical School — he was born in China and grew up in Thailand — but then he met May, a local teacher volunteering at a children’s hospital. Wedding bells rang. May felt that pull west, dearly wishing to raise their kids in California, so he took a job at the Sepulveda VA Hospital in Los Angeles in 1971.
We’ll jump ahead a bit to tell you that Ling has had a hand in studying every major medication for opiate addiction in the United States, is founding director of UCLA’s Integrated Substance Abuse Programs and a keen chronicler of how addiction treatment cleaved from mainstream medicine and was schluffed off to its current, expressly non-medical, silo.
Over there, it’s oft overseen by “recovering” addicts who may or may not be recovered. “Medication-assisted treatment” is still widely shunned. And detoxification — the initial weaning off substances — is tragically mistaken for…
Read the full article here
