National Post (National Edition)
Healing for the rich and famous
INSIDE THE NO-FRILLS, NO-B.S. ‘SUMMER CAMP’ FOR A-LIST ADDICTS
Set on a 35-acre former dude ranch in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, an hour outside of Phoenix, The Meadows boasts mountain views, clear air, myriad cacti, and, latterly, a growing reputation as a pre-eminent rehab facility for the A-list.
Its alumni register reads like a red carpet rollcall: Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson, Donatella Versace, John Galliano, the late Whitney Houston, Selena Gomez and Ronnie Wood. Harvey Weinstein reportedly checked in last month; Kevin Spacey is said to be there now.
Just as in the 1980s, when the Betty Ford Centre in California became the go-to destination for celebrities battling the demons of drugs and drink, treating the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Jerry Lee Lewis and a teenage Drew Barrymore, so, today, the wealthy and beleaguered make their way to The Meadows (often via private jet to the tiny Wickenburg Airport three miles away) to mend their ways and their reputation, in tandem.
But unlike Betty Ford, which focuses firmly on substance abuse, The Meadows, which is officially registered as a Psychiatric Acute Hospital, treats a raft of less traditional and, in some cases, less tangible problems, including not only eating disorders and gambling addictions, but love addiction, love avoidance, and codependency. Over recent years, it has become increasingly famed for its male sex addiction program, known as Gentle Path, which Tiger Woods is reported to have taken in 2010.
Whatever the trouble, treatment does not come cheap: in-patient programmes at The Meadows last a compulsory 45 days (though Weinstein, it is reported, left after only a week) and cost $1,200 a day (all figures US) — $54,000 in total. It can, therefore, come as a surprise, on check-in, to find oneself in a shared room, basic to the point of spartan. Though there is an outdoor pool, a gym and hiking trails, it’s there that the resemblance to a five-star holiday resort ends.
“The first night I was there, I was stuck in this tiny little room with two complete strangers, and one side-of-the-road, petrolstation-standard bathroom,” recalls Sean Brock, a high-profile U.S. chef with several award-winning restaurants including Husk in Charleston, S.C. “I’d just come back from two weeks in Tokyo, staying in one of the nicest hotels anywhere, so that was quite a shock,” he says. “I was listening to my roommates detoxing, and thinking this is not the luxury resort I was expecting.”
Brock, 39, checked into The Meadows in January to seek help for alcoholism, workaholism, anger and depression. He’d looked into the centre after reading an interview a few months before in which former patient Michael Phelps, who sought treatment for alcohol abuse, extolled its virtues. “But it took an intervention, a group of my closest friends saying, ‘the plane is waiting’, to actually get me there.”
Once installed, he quickly saw the benefits of the no-frills ethos. “It humbles you, it makes you vulnerable, it puts you in a different mindset. You realize you’re not there to relax. When you wake up in the morning and have to wait in a line to use the bathroom, you think: this is what jail would be like,” he says, gravely.
Compounding the sense of incarceration, Brock’s shoelaces and belt had been removed on arrival (“they gave them back to me eventually, but my trousers were falling down for days,” he recalls) and he had agreed to abide by the strict no-tech policy; phones, laptops and iPads as well as newspapers are all banned at The Meadows (a relief for certain patients, no doubt). Drugs and alcohol are banned, naturally, but so is caffeine and sugar. A dress code is firmly enforced, with no shorts or vest tops.
“In places that treat sex addiction, people are more easily triggered,” explains an anonymous former executive in the rehab centre industry, who is familiar with practices at The Meadows. “They want to minimize triggers, and are trying to desexualize the environment as far as possible.”
Outdoor smoking pits are segregated by gender, but The Meadows isn’t po-faced about its high-profile patients’ delicate problems; a sign in the communal television room warns clients they can only objectify a member of the opposite sex for three seconds.
Patients are identified by different-coloured name tags according to their specific addiction, but the therapeutic timetable is similar for all. Every day involves two sessions of group therapy, up to two hours at a time, in a small, mixed-gender, mixed-issue group, of around six people. Then there’s meditation, yoga, mindfulness, tai chi, even equine therapy, plus daily oneon-one trauma therapy.
“There is an intensive focus on trauma, and the idea is that everyone can find some focus in childhood to grab on to, to craft a narrative around,” says the expert. And while contact with the outside world is limited, family members are encouraged to fly in to take part in a week of family therapy sessions.
Clients are urged to also unlock their trauma in creative ways, by carrying rocks around to symbolize the burden they’ve been holding on to for decades, or whacking chairs with bats to exorcise their feelings of rage or resentment toward their parents.
“It sounds crazy, but once you understand that it is a spiritual journey, you start to understand why you pick up rocks,” says Brock. “There’s a lot of very spiritual work, such as American Indian talking circles; even just the air out there, and the sky and the stars — it is a very spiritual place.”
The Meadows was established in 1975 by Pat Mellody — a former Air Force navigator who helped create drug and alcohol programmes for the military during the Vietnam War — primarily to treat business executives with drinking problems.
All patients are issued with a Nineties-style beeper, which issues decrees about when to go to the lecture hall, or to dinner.
Brock gallantly reports the food during his 45 days to have been “better than I thought it would be. But most of the time, it needed a little something, so I would forage around the property and find wild herbs, raid the pantry for condiments, then make sauces and go around saucing everyone’s plates”.
For those for whom the $54,000 price tag is out of reach, The Meadows offers outpatient treatments, with weeklong courses costing $6,000 (not including accommodation) including healing heartache and healing intimate treason (for partners of sex addicts).
Not everyone is convinced of its efficacy, however, dubbing the centre “sex addiction summer camp” for those who can afford to pay for absolution.
“It is often a way for wealthy men of privilege to avoid taking responsibility for their sexual misbehaviours,” believes David Ley, a clinical psychologist in Albuquerque, N.M., and author of The Myth of Sex Addiction. “Sex addiction treatment is a male sexual privilege protection racket. And it is a form of public penance, like when people would wear shame masks or hair shirts, and walk around so that everyone knew they had done something they were ashamed of.”
Jenny Moore, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from Houston, Texas, has other concerns regarding the centre’s high-profile clients, having struggled to find anywhere decent to stay in Wickenburg, while attending The Meadows “Survivors I” course, for partners and children of addicts, as an outpatient in 2014.
“The best place I could find was a Best Western, and that was like the sort of place a murderer takes you to kill you. With all the money The Meadows has, they should build a hotel,” she suggests. “Where are Kevin Spacey’s family going to stay when they come out for family sessions?”