Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Presenting the whole picture?

When I read some of the promos for drug rehab on the Net, with their pictures of luxury suites, I have to ask myself two things: just how much does it cost (and therefore who’s going to go?) and what happens when real drug addicts turn up and start making a mess in the place.
It’s fine to say that the staff have all been addicts themselves and know the problems, but presumably they also know that a clean image is probably rather unrealistic. Even people who are trying to get free of drugs are rather messy – or maybe my ideas of drug rehab are based on the film Sandra Bullock starred in called 28 Days where life was anything but clean and tidy. (Yes, I know it was about alcohol addiction, but the principle’s the same.)
All right, you can’t ‘sell’ a drug rehab place by showing the grime and grubbiness of life with a bunch of addicts. Fair enough to present pictures of beds with clean sheets and comfortable pillows. Perhaps I’d just like to see the other side represented as well.

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