Why An Indonesian Rehab Center Doesn't Insist On Abstinence

Sam Nugraha runs a rehab center in Indonesia, and to understand his approach to addiction, he says it's important to know something about his country.

Sometimes, Nugraha says, Indonesians smile when they aren't really smiling. They're smiling, but underneath the smile, they aren't.

"Because the culture tells us we have to be polite," he says, "When we don't know the answer, then we have to smile. When we feel threatened, we have to smile. In our culture we are not supposed to expose our shortcomings to other people."

There's an Indonesian word that captures this — malu. There are a lot of ways to translate malu but one way is to define malu as a mask. Everyone knows what's underneath, but you still keep the mask on, hiding the stuff that doesn't look good.

In the 1990s a lot of heroin came into Indonesia from other parts of Southeast Asia. Nugraha became addicted in college. He spent time