Middle-class offered ‘dayhab’ treatment for addictions

A NEW network of “dayhab” centres is set to offer functioning alcoholics and drug addicts the chance to treat their problems while they live at home.

The chain of private centres, run by a former government adviser who helped Russell Brand come off heroin, says the method will offer therapy at a fraction of the cost of traditional residential programmes. The first unit, which will open in west London next month, follows warnings that those in their 50s are now most likely to be drinking at harmful levels, as millennials turn their back on such habits.

The chain – called Help Me Stop – is adapted from a US model, which claims three in four participants remain abstinent nine months after completing the programme.

The network is aimed at those in senior white-collar professional roles, who are functioning in the workplace but have a problem with drink or drugs. It comes after middle-class drug use was at the centre of the Tory leadership campaign, with Michael Gove under particular pressure.

A five-week, 160-hour programme at Help Me Stop will cost £2,500, compared to typical residential costs of around £25,000. The programme is adapted from an intensive outpatient treatment model successfully pioneered in the US. Chip Somers, Help Me Stop’s clinical director, a former drug addict who was a member of the Government’s rehabilitation expert panel between 2007-11, said: “Not everyone can afford to put their lives on hold for weeks at a time to go to rehab.”

Last year 260,153 people received some kind of NHS treatment for drug and alcohol problems, but fewer than 6,000 were placed in residential rehabilitation programmes.