Working to take the stigma out of rehab

Its founder, Johnny Graaff, is on first name terms with the super-elite thanks to his privileged upbringing. The grandson of anti-apartheid leader Sir De Villiers Graaff, he counts diamond heirs the Oppenheimers as friends along with Victoria Aitken, mother of Princess Diana's niece Kitty Spencer. A one-time heroin user, Aitken now works as a counsellor at Montrose.

Nearly four in five of Graaff's rehab "clients" are from the UK with referrals from The Priory and Harley Street. Such is the demand from Londoners that this month Graaff, 32, is opening his first treatment centre here. Located in a quiet Kensington mews, Cape House will provide recovery treatment rivalling that of the Meadows in Arizona, where Kate Moss confronted her cocaine habit. And it's cheaper — a stay in the US is about $50,000 compared with £10,000 per month at Montrose.

A growing number of patients treated by Graaff's expert team of therapists are outwardly successful women secretly relying on drink and drugs. Model Lara Stone, fiancée of comedian David Walliams, recently revealed she checked into rehab in South Africa after relying on Bloody Marys to get her through the morning. "There's a lot of pride about not admitting you have a problem and women are under pressure to keep their jobs," says Graaff.

"We get calls from GP practices in Chelsea with burned-out patients. From the London viewpoint, it's the workaholic executives addicted to drugs, gambling, sex, thrill-seeking. They're often very difficult to treat because they're used to being in control. We also treat a lot of people with eating disorders."

While some clinics offer quick-fix treatments, Graaff is a passionate believer in 90-day programmes to prevent relapse. This long-term approach was the key to his own recovery from drug addiction, a habit which took hold in his late teens. At one point, he was snorting up to four grammes of cocaine a day.

"I became addicted to feeling invincible," explains Graaff, a shy and endearingly humble man.

"I'd be awake at 6am looking for another gramme. Drugs were always available at parties and I had the money to buy them."

Every time he went out, Graaff would score. One night, he bought heroin by mistake and his heart stopped. At hospital next morning, the doctor warned he would die unless he quit drugs.

Later he was involved in a car crash that ended a woman's life and nearly his. It left Graaff in a three-day coma. Doctors also had to re-attach his tongue, which was severed in the crash. The accident in 2004 was a turning point which forced him to seek treatment.

"I'd come down after a three-day bender and was supposed to be going to my brother's wedding but went out in the car. A woman died in that crash — it's a trauma I still live with every day."

Years in and out of rehab followed. His girlfriend left him, his party friends deserted him. In Graaff's words, he was an "embarrassment".

He's now been in recovery for six years and limits his thrill-seeking to flying helicopters. The rest of his time he spends either with wife Aimee, 28, or working.

His goal is to remove the stigma from rehab and provide clinics which are the opposite of the "cheerless" places he encountered. But patients still have to make their own bed.

"Why should people go into a grotty dive because they're ill? But our clients do make their own beds. It's quite a novelty for them. We had one Saudi prince who thought it [making his bed] was quite fascinating."