Will Self: closing residential rehabs only increases the suffering of addicts

“Drug and alcohol rehabilitation, like all effective therapy for mental illness, is highly labour-intensive; requiring counsellors who are not just empathetic enough to reach their patients, but also sufficiently authoritative to confront them with the real consequences of their pathological behaviour… We dismiss the indigent addict and alcoholic at our peril; for there indeed, but for the grace of a collective conscience, go you – and, very definitely, I.”