Drug Rehabilitation Programs

In an industrial zone a few blocks off the 101 Freeway, the Tarzana Treatment Center relies on government contracts and nonprofit tax status to serve drug addicts in poverty or trouble with the law. A clerk sits behind protective glass in the lobby. Down a hallway in the detox wing, down-and-out men are curled on their cots. The coat hooks in the rooms flip down so patients can't hang themselves. It hardly seems like the headquarters of a $45-million-a-year business.

In light of widespread failings in a state-run treatment program for substance-abusing doctors, a key state senator said Monday that audits are needed of similar programs for nurses, pharmacists and other health professionals. Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) called a legislative hearing in the wake of a decision by the Medical Board of California last year to abolish its confidential addiction program after five audits found that it was not working.

Just before dawn, shoveling cow manure in the milking barn, Ryan Medlin feels a world away from his wild life back in San Francisco. For the onetime homeless addict, that's a good thing. Last fall, Medlin was living out of his car, blowing his entire six-figure salary as a software engineer on crack and bourbon binges. At 33, he was so gaunt he was nearly skeletal. He walked slouched over, the nights scrunched up in his Suzuki hatchback playing havoc with the nerves in his right leg.

The largest operator of sober-living homes in Newport Beach has agreed to preliminarily cut by a third the number of beds it provides at its drug and alcohol recovery facilities to settle a discrimination suit the company brought against the city. Sober Living by the Sea sued Newport Beach in February, alleging that the city discriminated against recovering drug and alcohol users by passing an ordinance that curbed operations at its facilities.

The battle over an initiative that would divert drug offenders from prison into treatment and loosen state parole policies has intensified heading into Tuesday's vote, with a bipartisan coalition of elected officials joining the state prison guards union to fight the measure. Supporters of Proposition 5, whose heavy fundraising advantage has been whittled down, have cast opponents as shills for the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.

California's $1-billion investment in drug treatment for prisoners since 1989 has been "a complete waste of money," the state's inspector general said Wednesday, and has done nothing to reduce the number of inmates cycling in and out of custody. One study of the two largest in-prison programs found that recidivism rates for inmates who participated were actually a bit higher than those of a group of convicts who did not receive treatment, Inspector General Matt Cate said.

Kevin Federline's request for an appearance in family court as part of his child custody dispute with Britney Spears was canceled Thursday after the pop star entered a rehabilitation program. Spears has entered the Promises Malibu drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, her manager, Larry Rudolph, confirmed in an e-mail. He gave no details.

A luxury rehabilitation center in Newport Beach has sued rocker Courtney Love for more than $180,000 for treatment she received after overdosing at a Hollywood nightclub in the summer of 2005. Love, whose three-month live-in program at Beau Monde International began in August 2005, paid the center $10,000 after entering treatment, but has repeatedly refused to pay the rest, said the lawsuit, filed this month in Orange County Superior Court.

Brian Watkins initially thought that Hurricane Katrina had done him a favor. It forced him to flee to southwestern Louisiana, where he planned to make a fresh start and kick his heroin and methadone habit. But then Hurricane Rita tore through that corner of the state, and Watkins was chased back to New Orleans. "At first I thought I could just go out and socialize," said Watkins, 23, who had been on probation for a narcotics offense before the storms. "But everybody was drugging.

One early evening in Long Beach in the mid-1980s, back when he was in the throes of a wicked addiction to crack cocaine, former Pro Bowl linebacker Isiah Robertson says he found himself staring into the barrel of a shotgun.