Seedy addiction treatment marketing

~ Jason Schwartz

I regularly get emails from people asking me post an infographic or a link on our website. Last week I got one from someone named Jeffrey Redd. I googled his name and email and found a post on “The Seedy Underbelly of Rehab Centers’ Online Marketing“.

John Grohol does a real service investigating these practices that make it very hard for honest treatment providers.

. . . Dan Callahan, the CEO and owner of Solutions Recovery Center which apparently also operates the Paradise Recovery Center1 in South Florida.  Caught between drinking and armed robbery, Callahan’s early adult life was headed in the wrong direction. But as he recounts here in a story he wrote for SAMHSA, he turned his life around, earning a Master’s degree from Fordham University and entering the human service field.

Since August 2012, he’s led Solutions. The rehab center appears to be a run-of-the-mill program offering the usual menu of residential addiction recovery services, with Callahan’s own unique twist.

But after digging a little below the surface, it appears that Callahan and his son Sean Callahan (yes, the same Sean Callahan I wrote about a year ago) are behind an intricate web of seemingly-independent websites and companies that support his South Florida recovery enterprise.

My interest in Callahan was ironically instigated by a slew of emails I’ve received over the past year from “Jeffrey Redd, Outreach Director.” The most recent one had the subject line, “Thanks for the Healthcare.gov mention.”

“I was doing some research about addiction, and noticed you mention HealthCare.gov on http://blogs.psychcentral.com/bipolar-life/2013/07/healthcare-reform-part-2/. . They are obviously one of the more important sites for people to visit due to current events.

It may also be important to mention the major change that is happening in the substance abuse, and mental health fields as it relates to these regulations. I helped create an article on QuitAlcohol.com you can see it here: http://www.quitalcohol.com/health-insurance-and-addiction.html”

Jeffrey Redd’s email address was jeff@onlynonprofits.org. Despite Jeff’s carefully-crafted email, it was immediately apparent he had no connection to Healthcare.gov (an official federal website). So why was he thanking me for our mention of it?

When I visited QuitAlcohol.com, a few red warning flags were immediately raised. It wasn’t long before I discovered it was one of nearly a dozen websites apparently operated or owned behind the scenes by Dan Callahan or his son Sean Callahan. These include:

  • Drugless.org
  • Quitalcohol.com
  • Withdrawal.org
  • Treatmentpartnership.org
  • Rehab-programs.org
  • Bestdrugrehabs.com
  • Samhsa.net
  • Paradiserehab.com
  • Addictionlibrary.org

None of these websites list their affiliation with Solutions Recovery Center directly.

Read the entire post at http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/04/28/the-seedy-underbelly-of-rehab-centers-online-marketing/

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.

One thought on “Seedy addiction treatment marketing”

  1. Thank you so much for bringing this out!

    Unfortunately, 12 years ago when my son was on the “forefront” of the pain pill/heroin addiction epidemic, I had no way of knowing this. I searched frantically for information in general and rehabs in particular online.

    I didn’t know that Nar-coo-noon (purposely misspelled) had done this exact thing. We found out too late they are affiliated with Scientology, and used many dubious and completely non evidence based “treatment” strategies.

    Would love to see you investigate Nar-coo-noon and their marketing methods in this same manner. Other information for parents/family to known is how this organization takes free drug information programs into schools and prisons. The Scientology connection is not only not mentioned, but vehemently denied.

    I’m not anti-rehab or even anti Scientology. I believe in freedom of religion, and to each his own. But $25,000 later (this was years ago, probably costs more now) we realized we had been conned. Family members need to be very cautious and skeptical when using the internet to find treatment options.

    (I left this same comment at the pscych-central site). Thank you for sharing
    this important information.

    this important information.

    Like

Comments are closed.