Who actually answered that number?
Some helplines are exactly what they look like. Some are companies that bought your phone call. Both sound similar for the first thirty seconds, and you deserve to know which one you are talking to.
A US House Energy and Commerce oversight memorandum found that facilities operate unbranded websites posing as neutral third party directories, that listed phone numbers have been altered to route calls to paying facilities, and that a facility CEO testified aggregators "are essentially collecting leads for treatment centers who are willing to pay a price." Call centers charged $20 to $40 per routed call. Source
Four questions, ninety seconds
- Are you a treatment center, or a referral service?An honest operation answers in one sentence.
- Do you get paid when I go somewhere?The whole question. Listen for a yes or a no rather than a speech.
- Which facilities do you work with, and how many?A real directory covers everybody. If the list is short and they will not say why, that tells you something.
- What company do you actually work for?Not the brand on the website. If those differ, that gap is the business model.
Things worth noticing
- Insurance questions in the first two minutes, before anything about your actual situation.
- Heavy urgency. A bed today, gone tomorrow. Real availability exists, but manufactured scarcity is a sales technique.
- Instant closeness plus pressure to decide now.
- Travel offered fast to a state you have never lived in.
- Only one recommendation.
- No straight answer to how they make money.
The friendliness is often real, which is what makes it work. Plenty of those reps genuinely like you during the call. They are also compensated on whether you get on the plane, and both things can be true.
Over fifty admissions I had reps promise to come see me on day three or four. Not once did that happen. Many were not even in the same state.
Places with nothing to sell you
- SAMHSA National Helpline, 1-800-662-4357. Free, confidential, government run, no referral fees.
- findtreatment.gov, the federal locator. Nobody paid to be listed.
- 988 for a crisis right now.
- Your state substance abuse agency.
Use those. Then talk to us or anybody else. We are not trying to be your only source, which is more than a lot of numbers you will find can say.
Sources for this page
- US House Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Majority Memorandum, July 20, 2018. Source
- David Armstrong and Evan Allen, STAT News and the Boston Globe, May 28, 2017. Source
- David Armstrong and Evan Allen, STAT News, July 7, 2017. Source
- Dave Aronberg, Palm Beach County State Attorney, written testimony before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee, December 12, 2017. Source
All public record. We link it so you can check us.