Shoshana Walter’s ‘Rehab’ Finds Corruption, Profiteering and Dismal Rates of Recovery In America’s Drug Treatment System

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nearly eight years ago, journalist Shoshana Walter followed a lead on a drug and alcohol rehab program that put patients to work at a chicken plant. What she found was one of many programs that boasted treatment and recovery, but actually profited off the unpaid labor of people struggling with addiction. In her new book, “Rehab: An American Scandal”, Walter continues to interrogate America’s drug treatment system by following four people navigating an industry that not only kept patients stuck in a cycle of addiction and relapse, but that actually stymied their recovery. We’ll talk through the dark side of the rehab industry, what this book reveals about the ways patients are exploited for profit, and who actually has a chance at recovery in America. Guests: Shoshana Walter, investigative reporter, the Marshall Project; author of "Rehab: An American Scandal" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED podcast comes from
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0:15.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport.
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0:23.6	Enjoy live performances in the terminals, celebrating 60 years of the Grateful Dead's musical legacy.
0:29.5	More at flysfo.com slash celebrates.
0:33.8	From KQED.
0:50.3	Music From KQED. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. So many of our discussions here in the Bay Area about drug addiction are about getting people into treatment.
0:57.0	But what happens after people actually get there?
1:00.0	Shoshana Walters' enraging new book Rehab an American scandal
1:04.0	investigates the ways American society refuses to actually provide addiction treatment at the scale it is needed.
1:11.4	Mostly because of greed, racism, and a lack of care about marginalized people.
1:16.9	One reason many people don't get better is that the care they're offered is exploitative or corrupt
1:21.4	or ignores the evidence we have from here and abroad about what works.
1:25.6	She's coming up next right after this news.
1:36.8	Welcome to Forum.
1:38.2	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:40.0	In the mornings walking from Bart across the mission to the station,
1:43.9	I often wonder about the lives of the people I pass doing drugs on Cap Street and the alleyways of the neighborhood.
1:50.8	Sure, they've made bad choices, they impose costs on everybody else in the city, but how can it be that our region, our state, our country cannot help people?
2:04.4	Even after one million Americans have died of drug overdoses. The failure is so profound that I think a lot of us have developed some
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