SOBERING VACATION

A New Wave of Addiction Treatment Centers Is Turning Malibu into the
Capital of Luxury Rehab -- and Raising Questions About Whether
Five-Star Service and Recovery Mix.

MALIBU, Calif. -- Each sumptuous bed here at a retreat called
Promises has been fitted with Frette linens and a cashmere throw.

The elongated pool beckons as does the billiard room beyond, tucked
into the Santa Monica mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

But not just anyone can come to this exclusive getaway -- and really,
not many would want to. Promises is an addiction-treatment center
that caters to a mix of celebrities, corporate chiefs, their families
and people who want to live like them.

Promises is part of a growing niche in the burgeoning business of
addiction treatment: centers that are truly, deeply luxurious.

With more than a dozen recovery centers in this seaside village,
Malibu has become the center of the high end of the industry --
perhaps logically, given its resort-like location, enclaves of
celebrity homes and proximity to Los Angeles, a city whose primary
industry is rife with partying and free-flowing cash. California law
has helped by allowing rehab centers to be located in residential
neighborhoods if they have no more than six beds. At Renaissance,
where a staff of 50 caters to a dozen patients, one bedroom suite for
a single resident measures 2,000 square feet -- as big as many
three-bedroom homes.

Another center, Harmony Place, will supply personal concierges and
pedicures if patients ask. A few miles north of Promises on the
Pacific Coast Highway, Passages offers surfing instructors. Clients
stroll around in swim trunks chatting on cellphones in a sprawling
sea-view mansion that is hard to distinguish from a luxury resort.
"We are a very comfortable place to do some very uncomfortable work,"
says Don Grant, admissions director for Harmony Place.

There are conflicts between recovery and luxury, according to
addiction experts. Many of the 14,000 or so treatment centers in the
U.S. adhere to guidelines that include an element of hard labor --
bed making, floor scrubbing, laundry and other duties that are
intended to serve as equalizers among all addicts.

Robert DuPont, former national drug czar under presidents Nixon and
Ford and now president of the nonprofit Institute for Behavior and
Health in Rockville, Md., says: "Self-centeredness is the key to the
addiction....To get well, they have to leave their ego behind."

But at luxe centers that charge $35,000 to $75,000 a month, many
clients expect five-star service, not equality.

Some Malibu facilities argue that they treat people who might not
otherwise seek rehab. "We're talking about people who wouldn't go
into treatment in a place where they had chores," says Mr. Grant, of
Harmony Place, where clients do their own laundry. Chris Prentiss,
co-founder of the center called Passages, eschews the benefits of
chores. "We don't believe in punishment," Mr. Prentiss says. "There's
no floor washing here."

Most of the other treatment facilities here adhere to the traditional
12-Step philosophy that has guided addiction treatment for decades:
From Step 1, an admission to being powerless to the addiction,
through Step 12, promising to carry the recovery mission to other addicts.

The rehab process involves hours of daily group and individual
therapy with licensed counselors treating people who generally arrive
in crisis, often with injuries sustained in falls, car accidents or
other mishaps that precipitated their arrival.

The minimum stay for most centers is about 30 days -- an industrywide
norm established by insurance carriers.

Some carriers might reimburse for a fraction of the cost, but many
patients in these places pay for the whole thing themselves.

Patients at some Malibu centers can take acupuncture and walks on the
beach with therapists. There is also equine therapy, an art that Sal
Petrucci, a former dentist who founded Renaissance Malibu, says
doesn't involve riding, but involves getting a horse to respond to
vocal commands.

He describes it as trying to "get into the soul of the horse and
connect as one with it." In the case of a celebrity who is in the
midst of a project, Promises will provide a sobriety escort who will
ferry the celebrity to and from the set, making sure he or she
doesn't sneak off and relapse. For many years, the Betty Ford Center
was considered the pinnacle of addiction treatment.

But in recent years, as the rehab taboo has lessened and more people
have sought treatment, the Ford Center's larger, more hospital-like
facilities, with costs of roughly $21,000 for month's stay, have
maintained their reputation for excellence but have come to seem more
clinical against the new competition.

While earning double-digit profit margins, many Malibu operators are
expanding rapidly.

Renaissance is working on a plan to expand to the Philippines and
England as well as elsewhere in the U.S. Passages has purchased two
houses on one gated Malibu street and is in negotiations to buy a
third, and Mr. Prentiss, its co-founder, says he hopes one day to own
all seven homes on the street: "At nearly $60,000 a month, it doesn't
take a rocket scientist to figure out we're taking in $20 million a
year." It's hard to tell, though, whether these places are any more
successful than any other.

And with the exception of Passages' Mr. Prentiss, the Malibu centers
aren't claiming to be more successful -- just more comfortable. There
is no standard to measure the success of addiction treatment.

The problem lies both with the lack of a clear definition of success
- -- sober for one year, five years or a lifetime? -- and verifying it,
which would require addicts to report in honestly.

People often say they choose the Malibu facilities because they've
heard famous people went there, and assume the treatment must be
good, or because they want the creature comforts. "I knew I had to do
something," says Kristen Bufe, who attended Passages for two months
in 2004 after she could no longer find a fresh vein to shoot up
heroin. "I'd heard of rehab, but I had this vision of Betty Ford
where you had to clean toilets and things like that." Many experts
believe that creature comforts have little to do with success in
recovery, and that the best way for addicts to improve their chances
is to simply spend more time in rehab.

Dennis O'Sullivan is the executive director of People in Progress, a
residential rehab center that treats former prisoners and other
down-and-out addicts in the San Fernando Valley. At a cost per client
of $60 a day, covered largely by donations and government programs,
People in Progress clients sleep on bunk beds with blankets donated
by a local homeless shelter.

But clients are required to commit to living there for a year. "The
longer your exposure to treatment, the better your chances of
recovery," Mr. O'Sullivan says. Just a few years ago, Promises was
the only luxury rehab center in Malibu. Richard Rogg, a lanky
recovering cocaine addict, was running a West Los Angeles recovery
center in 1997, when some deeply troubled clients surprised him by
demanding more luxury. "They're being wheeled in on a gurney to save
their lives, and they're looking around going 'what's the thread
count of the sheet?' " Mr. Rogg says with a shake of his head. Still,
he looked around with the thought of upgrading his center when he
came upon a sprawling Mediterranean home in Malibu with a separate
guest house. He bought it.

Within weeks of opening in Malibu, "some of my friends referred some
celebrities," Mr. Rogg says. Soon, comings and goings at Promises
were being photographed by paparazzi from on a hillside using
long-range lenses.

Mr. Rogg, a lantern-jawed former real-estate developer with a
sometimes morose demeanor, says he was surprised by the center's
popularity with big names. "I didn't come up here and say, 'Let's hit
up the rich and famous and get all these celebrities,' " he says.

His celebrity contacts have come in handy.

These days, Mr. Rogg is creating a new Los Angeles facility that will
treat low-income mothers and their children, to keep the children out
of foster care.

Earlier this year, at a fund-raiser at the polo games at Will Rogers
State Park, actor Tom Arnold spoke, as did comedian Richard Lewis.
Actor Louis Gossett Jr. addressed the crowd: "My name is Louis and
I'm an alcoholic." They raised $280,000 for the treatment shelter
that day, Mr. Rogg says, noting with a hint of cheer, "That's enough
for our first year of operations."

A 12-Step devotee, Mr. Rogg and others say that Promises Malibu
maintains a sober approach to recovery.

Every patient has chores.

Corporate executives, he says, are often the best workers, wiping out
ashtrays with fervor. Promises patients have come to call the
facility "the Rock" for its seat in the coastal mountains, as well as
its tough-love role. "They hit you mind, body and spirit.

The money spent has given me a new life," says one former client,
whose employer, an advertising agency, sent him there, and is now
deducting the cost from his pay. "It might have fancy sheets and it
might have triple-A food, but at the end of the day, it's a hard-core
program." It took only a few years before other entrepreneurs -- many
of them recovering addicts themselves -- began to replicate Promises'
business model. The copycats are a source of steady irritation to Mr.
Rogg and none more than Passages, whose treatment philosophy is at
odds with Promises but whose name he says is similar.

One former Passages client says he ended up there because he was
looking for Promises when he was loaded and got the names mixed up.

Mr. Prentiss, of Passages, argues that he has discovered a cure for
addiction that involves uncovering a core problem through hours of
individual therapy.

This approach stands in stark contrast to many rehab centers around
the country.

Mr. Prentiss is a real-estate developer and the self-published writer
of self-help books with titles like "For Once in Your Life, Be Who
You Want, Have What You Want." He opened Passages as the "recovery
plan" for his son Pax, the now-32-year-old co-founder, who had been
addicted to heroin and other drugs since adolescence. "We cure people
every day," says Mr. Prentiss. He argues that "alcoholism doesn't exist.

It's a condition created so that insurance companies would pay for treatment.

If I had an itch and scratched, would you say I have scratchism?"

Claims of a "cure" run counter to most in the addiction-recovery
business. "I know of no reputable scientist who doesn't see it as a
chronic disease," says Barry Karlin, chief executive of CRC Health
Group Inc. in Cupertino, Calif., a fast-growing chain of rehab centers.

The evidence Mr. Prentiss offers of his success is anecdotal: It
includes the case of a young woman who did drugs because, Mr.
Prentiss says, she believed she wasn't pretty. "I took her into the
bathroom and stood her in front of the mirror.

I took her hair back and I took her shoulders and pulled them back.
She was lovely." Mr. Prentiss says that by the end of her stay, the
young woman was using makeup, had her hair fixed and now makes a
living as a model.

Two koi ponds flank the entrance to Passages' marble and gilt main
building, where 34 therapists treat 29 patients in three residences
where most share a room. They include two spiritual counselors -- one
drives a Lexus sports car and says she's psychic -- as well as
massage therapists, "life purpose counselors," hypno-therapists and
an "image therapist" who encourages patients to use digital cameras
to express themselves. One chef came from Spago. The staff leans
toward attractive young women dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Sitting
in a cushy leather lounge chair in Passage's great room, Mr. Prentiss
greets, hugs, and pats his clients as they roam by. "How ya doin'?"
he asks a young woman who passes with her just-delivered dry
cleaning. "Not too well," she responds.

After she disappears, Mr. Prentiss confides, "She just found out
she's pregnant two days ago."

Not everyone who attends these places is rich. One patient at
Passages recently was a Hawaii bartender who paid the fee for three
separate stays with an inheritance from her mother.

Her hands shake as she pours herself a glass of lemon water. "She'll
be dead if she doesn't get it this time," Mr. Prentiss says, out of earshot.

Another recent client there sells cable-television services door to
door. Convinced that Passages offered a solution that didn't label
him diseased, he paid his bill by remortgaging his Los Angeles condo.
"When you're there putting your heart and soul into therapy -- and
then you get a massage," he says, "it's the relief."