Six questions I wish I had asked before checking my alcoholic sixteen year old into a 12-step inpatient program for teens. 1. Do you see Alcohol Addiction as psychological or a spiritual weakness and/or a character flaw? . OR do the continual cravings, anxiety, and depression that alcoholics relieve by drinking signify an underlying biophysical pathway that doesn't respond to talk alone? 2. Do you do lab tests to confirm the underlying causes of his depression, anxiousness, and other unstable symptoms? (Without knowing cause, how can you hope to correct it?) 3. Do you add more synthetic, pharmaceutical drugs to his already unstable brain? Or would you be willing to restore him to health using safe, real chemicals that humans have depended on for stability and sanity for the past million years? (This approach to healing is called Orthomolecular Medicine. It successfully and safely corrects all kinds of mental symptoms.) 4. Knowing our brains are physical, not psychological, (We can hold the brain in our hands)and that the brain runs entirely on natural chemicals (not wise advice), and that shortages of these important chemicals occur genetically, or by destruction from drugs (including pharmaceuticals) and by other poisons we ingest, does your treatment program still depend entirely on "talking" to the alcoholic brain, or do you also correct what is out of balance or damaged. 5. What are your recovery rates over a three-year period? Health recovery Center, a 32-yearold orthomolecular treatment program, that solves both addiction and mental illnesses, as well as offering therapy achieves a success rate of 74% over three-and-one-half years. Compare HRC's peer reviewed journal published study with the Rand Report of US government studies of 12-step programs from 7 hospitals after 4 years: these have a success rate of only 7% not drinking. 6. Ask the right questions before entering treatment or you are likely to become part of that revolving door of relapsing, psychiatrically damaged, alumni of traditional 12-step programs . or worse: The Archives of General Psychiatry reports on a large study Suicide in Alcoholism of 1,500 treated alcoholics. One in four committed suicide, following treatment, usually within the first year of having been discharged from a program. My son Rob committed suicide, shortly after returning home from his 12-step treatment. (Ninety-eight percent of treatment in the US is 12-step programs).Health Recovery Center has never had a suicide because HRC incorporates extraordinary bio-medical brain repair along with therapy. It has the highest recovery rates in Minnesota.