The cost of treatment facilities for alcoholics and drug addicts can be quite high but in many instances government funds and charitable donations might be available to finance the treatment of your alcoholic/addict provided they are not in prison.

In rare instances some treatment facilities may even treat patients with no charge but these are extreme cases in which the patients have been completely devastated by their addiction and are left with no friends, family, or money to help pay the cost of the treatment facility.

The charge for one month of treatment at any of the Phoenix House treatment facilities is about $1,500. According to the Phoenix house, financial support for its treatment is provided by a combination of government funds at the Federal, state, and county levels, corporate and foundation grants, private contributions, and in many cases the cost of the treatment facility is covered by insurance.

Residential treatment facilities originated in a program called Synanon which was founded by Charles Dederich who himself had been an addict and took several elements of the AA treatment and incorporated them into the Synanon program.

Daytop Village, one of the two largest non profit treatment facilities in America, was founded in 1963 inspired by Synanon. And the Phoenix House is the other large non treatment facility and America was founded in 1968 with the help of Daytop Village and several former Synanon residents on its staff.

Daytop was founded by Joseph Shelley who was the chief probation officer in Brooklyn and was looking for help developing a program which would improve the results of drug addicts on probation. Daytop is an acronym for Drug Addicts Treated on Parole. The “y” was added at a later date to make it easier to pronounce.

These three pioneering alcohol and drug addiction treatment facilities were developed in large part to help those afflicted during alarming epidemics of the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s heroin addiction was out of control and the use of cocaine and crack cocaine reached epidemic proportions in the 1960s.

The dramatic successes of these organizations in helping hardcore drug addicts recover attracted government and charitable funds that would allow them to help more people. Both Daytop Village and the Phoenix House have assisted tens of thousands of patients in their recovery from addiction to drugs or alcohol. Before the success of these treatment facilities, such positive results have never been achieved on such a large scale.

The chance of recovery in one of these treatment facilities is very high on one condition. That condition is completion of the entire program from beginning to end which in the case of residential treatment facilities can mean 8, 12, or 15 months of living in the treatment facility. And that is followed by many months in an aftercare program.