You Call This ‘Summer Camp’?

Reading “A Survivor’s Guide to Rehab” (Dec. 12), I was stunned when writer Robin Scholer stated that “checking into rehab was an interesting experience” and “in a way, [rehab] was like summer camp for adults.”

I am the intake coordinator at an 80-bed rehabilitation facility in Van Nuys. Our residents, for the most part, don’t “check in.” They stagger. Some have literally crawled through our doors. More than half of our residents have had problems with the legal system and are on probation or parole or have been ordered into our facility by the courts. They are the homeless and the hopeless, not “well-known actors clinically depressed at having been overlooked by the Academy Awards and there for a little R&R.;” Many of our men are beaten down by the ravages of addiction and are in moral despair.

We graduate five to 10 men each month and see them return to the world as productive members of society, full of hope and self-esteem.

Mike Manning

Valley Glen