The other day I was approached by a new client who wanted to talk to me. He had just arrived at our program from New Mexico. He told me he once spent 30 days at a famous treatment program, a stay that had cost his insurance company some $30,000. I asked him how long he had remained sober after leaving that treatment program.

“About four years,” he replied.

When I asked him why he had come to a program such as ours, which costs about $5500 a year, his answer surprised me. He said that his wife had been in a woman's recovery program in our city several months earlier. When he started looking for a recovery program after he relapsed, she told him that she'd heard about a really tough program that was in the same city. She said it had a reputation as a "no-nonsense" program for those who were serious about recovery.

I was pleased to hear that our program has that kind of reputation. One thing that sometimes hurts programs such as ours is that there are several halfway house operators in our area who are simply trying to rent real estate – yet they call it a recovery program. Our proram, however, is different because we are serious about one thing: recovery.

We welcome anyone into our program, whether they have money or not. But many leave soon after they arrive because they discover that we have a lot of restrictions, that we drug test people, and have a lot of guidelines about behavior. Once the unmotivated realize we are serious about recovery, they get angry and find an excuse to leave. They usually end up in one of the programs in town that bill themselves as recovery programs. But many of them have few restrictions on behavior. They don't have a drug testing program. And they have minimal requirements as far as meeting attendance or in-house groups. As long as they pay the weekly fee clients can do pretty much as they please.

Our situation is different in that we will close down before we let clients do as they please. Because of this policy we are bashed a lot on the streets and in the prisons. Because they need an excuse for their failure to stay sober, former clients will say that anything goes at our places. Our response to those who believe them is always the same: spend a week with us and see if you can do whatever you want in our program.

No one has ever taken us up on that offer.