Deborah Becker

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439 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard 13 Sep

Deborah Becker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.

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Up First from NPR · RFK Jr lauds Italy's addiction treatment. Can it work here? · 29 Mar 2026 podcast

He's now 78 years old.

He spent two years there in the 1960s.

And he admits that there were practices that would never be allowed today, like forcing residents to shave their heads and humiliating them as a form of so-called therapy.

But he credits Synanon with keeping him off drugs.

And unlike San Patrignano, Synanon never really resurrected itself after its fall.

Well, there's no question that the country needs new options for treating addiction.

But San Patrignano has been built over more than four decades, and it's a comprehensive, established community, well-connected to a lot of businesses and philanthropists.

So it would take many years and a lot of money to try to recreate that here.

There are hundreds of small therapeutic communities in the U.S., but many are for specialized populations like people leaving prison or those with significant psychiatric issues.

Some are private, and those can be quite expensive.

I visited a relatively new treatment farm in Massachusetts, which is free.

It accepts 16 low-income men who have both mental health and addiction issues.

As to RFK Jr.

's plans for treatment farms here, he has not yet gotten his grand vision launched.

He has made state grants available for more addiction treatment, and his office just expanded funding for faith-based addiction treatment.

But in terms of creating a version of San Patrignano in this country that

that's going to take a while and a major commitment that we're just not seeing yet.

And I might note, President Trump has said that he supports forcing people into treatment rather than making it voluntary, something that, of course, failed in Italy.

Well, thanks for having me.

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