You Can't Do It Alone: The Daytop Way to Make Your Child Drug Free - Hardcover

O'brien, William B.; Henican, Ellis

9780671728373: You Can't Do It Alone: The Daytop Way to Make Your Child Drug Free

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671728377 ISBN 13: 9780671728373

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1993

The founder of Daytop Village, a successful drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for young people, recalls how the center has helped more than sixty thousand young people and offers advice for treatment

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From Kirkus Reviews:

The story of the most successful drug-treatment program ever, as told by its founder. One day in 1957, O'Brien explains, Chuck Dederich, a longshoreman unsatisfied with A.A.'s then-refusal to work with drug addicts, opened a storefront in California--and addicts soon began flocking to Synanon. Four years later, Synanon had done for thousands of abusers what no physician or psychiatrist had been able to: offer an effective cure that addicts gave themselves. Enter O'Brien, who, since his days as a young priest in the Bronx, had been stunned by heroin's devastation. To offer on the East Coast the kind of service that Synanon provided in California, O'Brien rented a house, found a Synanon graduate to be his program director, and launched ``Daytop Village''--soon filled to bursting with hopeful addicts. Here, aided by N.Y.C. journalist Henican, O'Brien takes us inside a typical Daytop house, vividly portraying how it feels to be part of a family after a lifelong scramble on the streets or in a string of foster homes. There are two cardinal rules at Daytop: No drugs, and no violence. Residents talk their rage out in encounter groups--a first step toward socialization--and everybody works at a job in the house. O'Brien's talks with addicts about their past, their Daytop experience, and their future are gripping--but he crows a bit too much as he records one triumph after another as Daytop goes worldwide (``We have provided technical guidance to so many countries around the world, it is impossible to remember them all''), and he spends page after tedious page thanking supporters, including Tony Orlando, Mary Tyler Moore, Shirley Maclaine, Roger Staubach, and on and on. A timely, if overly promotional, introduction to the only drug-treatment method that works for the hard-core addict. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1957, a young man was brutally murdered in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood by a gang of drug-addicted teens. Feeling compelled to address the drug problem that had led to such a tragic incident, O'Brien, a Monsignor, founded the first Daytop drug rehabilitation center in Staten Island in the early 1960s. Today, Daytop Villages exist in California, Florida, Texas and overseas, as well as throughout New York. Unlike most other drug rehabiliation programs, a majority (88%) of Daytop graduates remain drug-free. How is this so? Mainly, it appears, because of Daytop's emphasis on a combination of discipline and love. Using elements from Synanon and 12-step programs, and based on the debatable conviction that addiction results from an overly permissive upbringing, Daytop seeks to create a family atmosphere that will require total honesty and taking responsibility. Group meetings are of utmost importance, and addicts are required to work their way from menial chores to more "desirable" duties. Passionate and outspoken, O'Brien, writing with freelancer Henican, is critical of politicians, the media and others whose misguided "war on drugs" and "just say no" campaigns have done little to eradicate the problem. The book ends with a plea for more effective--and loving--drug rehabilitation efforts.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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