Every day in 2002, about one million people in the United States were receiving treatment for alcohol or drug addiction. By 2003, $133 billion per year was spent treating the long-term and short-term medical consequences of addiction.

In 2002, about 11 percent of addicts in the United States received initial treatments at inpatient facilities like Hazelden (the clinic represented in A Million Little Pieces) or at hospitals, if they could afford it or had insurance that would cover the cost. Beginning in the 1960s, such facilities, based on the so-called Minnesota model of short-term inpatient care, offered addicts the chance to detoxify and move toward sobriety in a controlled environment for several weeks. The term of twenty-eight days was a norm, though some nonhospital residential treatments lasted from a few months to two years. While government support of such treatment in lieu of...