ABSTRACT
This book demonstrates that there is a fundamental similarity, analogy, or parallel between the drug treatment program of the therapeutic community (Recovery House) and the evangelical Christian discipleship training program (Redemption House). It concludes that therapeutic community treatment (recovery) is phenomenologically quite similar, if not precisely the same process as religious conversion (redemption) as a means of (attempting to) free people of their drug use problems. Recovery House is, like Redemption House, a social-psychological pressure cooker for the correction (social and ideological conformity) of social "misfits" and "troublemakers". Redemption House believes it has theological truth and promises to set its residents free from slavery to addiction by faith. Recovery House claims scientific status for its operation and with state help can force residents to submit to its treatment regime—a regime that in other details promises little more than similar treatment with different labels.
