You know the old saying: Two’s company, three’s a crowd.In the case of VistaBay Watsonville, a popular and effective drug treatment facilitybased near Santa Cruz, Calif., three locations are what’s needed to appease thecrowds. The Narconon-based treatment provided by Vista Bay

Santa Cruz quicklyproved to be so effective that there were soon more clients than the in-housetreatment center could accommodate. So in the past few years,

, anaward-winning, nationally recognized drug treatment center has branched out, withnew locations in Placerville, California and South Lake Tahoe, Calif.Expansion at Vista Bay was vital. Since first opening its doors in 1992, the Vista BaySanta Cruz (Watsonville) facility and its satellite houses have successfully graduatedover 1,000 students from its detox and education-based program. The Narconon program differs from the more familiar 12-step or drug-for-drugtreatment options normally offered to people suffering from substance abuse.For starters, the VistaBay Watsonville program teaches that addictions are notchronic conditions that must be accepted and controlled. Rather, addiction can behandled with the proper detox and education. The Vista Bay Santa Cruz program’s unorthodox approach to detox, involvingintense dry sauna sessions, sounds strange to the skeptical. But as anyone who hasgone through the treatment will tell you, it works. The theory behind sweat detox issimple: Every time an addict uses a drug, residues from that drug use are leftbehind in the body and never processed. These residues lodge themselves intomuscle tissue, sometimes for years. When they are finally released into thebloodstream again, they create the addictive feelings that the addict worked sohard to overcome. Relapses are common, often years after the addict has last useddrugs.Dr. Megan Shields, MD, has been involved with the program for nearly 20 years. Shesaid that until she discovered the sauna detox program, she had seen a variety of psychiatric and “just say no” detoxification methods that simply didn’t work.“It wasn’t until I discovered the Sauna Detoxification Program at VistaBayWatsonville that I knew we had a dynamic, working solution to a terrible problem,”Shields said. She added that patients who completed the sauna detox programunderwent an amazing physical and mental transformation. “The depression,hopelessness and fear I saw in so many patients completely disappeared uponcompletion of the program.”