If you want to get clean, all you need to do is hold a cup outside a supermarket and fundraise, or, if you prefer, work unpaid hours as assigned — but don’t ask questions, this is all part of your addiction treatment plan.

Or so seems the unspoken deal posed by Adult & Teen Challenge, Northeast, Inc., in Brockton, Massachusetts. The addiction recovery center was recently ordered by the court to pay $1.15 million in penalties after a state investigation found that those seeking addiction treatment were required to perform hours of unpaid work. Surprise! That free labor benefited the bottom line of Adult & Teen Challenge USA, and didn’t do a lick for the patients.

Massachusetts’ Attorney General’s office defined Adult & Teen Challenge as “a national network of accredited and affiliated programs in over 20 states that claim to have 220 residential programs.” In other words: Adult & Teen Challenge is sophisticated enough to be a big, national operation. So we can assume the people in charge knew exactly what they were doing when asking patients to, say, provide cleaning services for free. A spokesperson told the Boston Herald that they strongly disagree with this ruling, a comment most people will read as sour grapes at getting caught and being forced to pay penalties.

Speaking of grapes, how’s turning that holy water into wine?

Important to note here for anyone following straight-up cynical approaches to addiction treatment that Adult & Teen Challenge, Inc. — Inc. — puts the H in Jesus Christ, explaining that their approach is, quote, “OUR VISION IS SEEING ALL PEOPLE FREED FROM LIFE-CONTROLLING ISSUES THROUGH THE POWER OF JESUS CHRIST!” Capitalization, of course, being the yelling format of internet sloganeering. 

To which I offer this internet-language, ASCII text response:

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

That angry-person flipping tables response is reasonable in a situation like this: People dealing with addiction, already vulnerable, are knowingly taken advantage of for financial gain, and the perpetrators hide under halos. Gimme a break. 

This reminds me of the oft-repeated quote of unknown origin: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag,” to which some append with “and carrying a cross.”

I’m not calling the people at Adult & Teen Challenge fascists — that’s a tad dramatic — but I am calling them out on the hypocrisy of unpaid labor in a Jesus wrapper. WWJD? Not the dishes for free and call that recovery services. 

Which brings us to the perennial hot-button topics of government and religion. Or at least the government. How our government sets budgets and implements policy impacts addiction treatment in numerous ways. 

Currently, a dataset critical to understanding ​​the scope of addiction in America has been canceled. In my view, that decision echoes the crass behavior of the Adult & Teen Challenge recovery centers. Why? Because it also illustrates perfectly the idea that if we don’t count something, it doesn’t exist. That something is the now-missing data once collected by SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).

In 2025, the current Administration stopped the data collection of the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), a nationwide public health surveillance system that monitors substance-related emergency department visits. This was “as part of a broader effort to align agency activities with agency and administration priorities.” Reasonable people may disagree on the scale, scope, or cost associated with collecting this data. But without the data, it becomes more difficult to understand where addiction hotspots arise nationally, what programs are working, and what efforts are not effective. 

Just one example: We know quaaludes are making a comeback. This particular drug was nearly extinct once U.S. laws (policy!) prevented pharmaceutical companies from manufacturing it. But in recent years, the film The Wolf of Wall Street brought “ludes” to a brand new audience, ironically setting the stage for some chemist-for-hire demand, a job description popularly portrayed in the television series Breaking Bad. Without national data to understand the landscape, it will be more difficult to track where networks and drugs flow. 

Demanding unpaid labor dehumanizes people struggling with addiction. So is the decision to intentionally limit study on addiction itself by canceling data collection. Being table-flipping mad on behalf of those experiencing addiction is a reasonable response. 

Written by Katie McCaskey. First published September 15, 2026.

Sources:

“Massachusetts addiction rehab penalized $1.15M for unpaid labor program,” Boston Herald, September 1, 2026.

“Epic Table Flip Face 44,” ASCII pasta, accessed September 8, 2026.

SAMHSA.gov homepage, accessed September 8, 2026.

‘The quaalude comeback: a once ‘extinct’ drug from the 70s makes a resurgence,’ The Guardian, September 6, 2026.

Image Copyright: svetlanais.