In a dimly lit street in Silao, in the heart of Guanajuato state, a pickup truck rolls slowly through the night. Five men ride in the back. Their director, Nicolás Pérez, calls it a “spiritual mission.” In reality, it is a forced abduction. The man they are about to seize has no say in the matter. His destination is La Sagrada Familia, one of the Mexico drug rehabilitation centres that Pérez has run for 20 years. His only offence, as far as his captors are concerned, is methamphetamine addiction.

What plays out on those streets reflects a crisis consuming an entire state. These makeshift facilities, known locally as anexos, have multiplied across Guanajuato in direct response to a cartel-driven methamphetamine epidemic. They operate largely outside the law. In a region where two of the country’s most violent criminal organisations are fighting for dominance, even the most well-intentioned recovery centre has become a target.

The Methamphetamine Flood

Guanajuato was once one of Mexico’s most prosperous and peaceful states. That changed after 2015, when the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) moved in to challenge local gangs for control of the region’s illicit economies. The prize included lucrative fuel theft networks siphoning oil from a local refinery, as well as Guanajuato’s strategic highway corridors linking Mexico to the United States.

The human cost has been devastating. Annual murders in the state climbed from 957 in 2015 to 2,539 in 2025. Nearly 5,700 people are currently missing, with around 870 disappearing in the past year alone.

The CJNG flooded working-class neighbourhoods and factories with crystal methamphetamine to fund their war against the local Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. The drug found ready users among factory workers on long night shifts. “There’s a lot of crystal meth there because the work is hard, especially at night,” says a man interned at La Sagrada Familia who goes by “El Bolas.” He first bought the drug from co-workers who were already dealing to pay for their own habits. Things escalated fast. He stopped going to work, had two road accidents, and eventually lost control entirely.

Addiction rates surged. Mexican addiction treatment centres that once housed 10 or 15 people were suddenly sheltering up to 100.

How Mexico Drug Rehabilitation Centres Actually Operate

At least 520 anexos now operate in Guanajuato and roughly 3,000 across Mexico. They exist because the country provides almost no publicly funded residential drug treatment. Without a formal registration system, the exact number is impossible to confirm.

La Sagrada Familia offers a clear picture of how many function. The centre runs out of a two-storey shop house. The front office keeps handcuffs and sedatives on hand. Residents nearing the end of their stay serve as guards, stopping newcomers from escaping. Pérez once nearly lost an eye when a new admittee stabbed him.

The treatment model combines forced sobriety, strict discipline, and the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous programme. Residents meet several times a day to share their experiences. Long-term residents act as informal mentors. The five men who join Pérez on his nightly rounds are all current residents at La Sagrada Familia. They know the men they are collecting; they once shared the same methamphetamine binge parties.

Families who bring a loved one voluntarily pay between 1,600 and 2,000 pesos per month, roughly £70 to £90. Pérez says he turns nobody away who cannot afford it.

A 2020 report by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission documented the darker side of the anexo system: poor hygiene, unqualified staff, forced internment, and physical abuse. Deaths among residents have also been reported. Whether effective or harmful, Mexico drug rehabilitation centres of this kind remain, for millions of people, the only option available.

The Massacre That Put Mexican Addiction Treatment Centres on the Map

In July 2020, the threat facing Mexican addiction treatment centres became impossible to ignore.

Alejandra, whose surname is withheld for her protection, was staying at an anexo called Buscando el Camino a mi Recuperación in Irapuato when heavily armed men entered and gathered the male residents on the upper floor. “I never imagined they were going to kill them,” she recalls. “They shot them all in the head. When they shot the guy at the door, blood splattered on me and a shell casing fell on my hand.” She fled. Twenty-seven people did not survive.

The massacre revealed what security analysts had been watching for some time. The CJNG had been turning anexos into hideouts, drug distribution points, and recruitment grounds. Security analyst David Saucedo estimates that as many as one third of Guanajuato’s anexos now operate under CJNG control.

When the local Santa Rosa Cartel found out, they attacked. “The Jalisco Cartel is trying to shield and defend its anexos, and the Santa Rosa Cartel is trying to exterminate them. That is what we currently have: it is the war of the anexos,” Saucedo says.

The violence never stopped. In January this year, gunmen killed two people when they sprayed an anexo called Los Marginados with bullets.

Why Shutting Them Down Only Made Things Worse

Between 2020 and 2025, Guanajuato authorities suspended around 49 anexos for sanitary violations, missing permits, and regulatory failures. The goal was to protect the public. The result was the opposite.

Dozens of centres kept running underground. Those who had relied on them found themselves on the streets without any support. “There was a moment when, unaware this would happen, we carried out operations where we closed the anexos,” a senior official in Irapuato told the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. “It was said: there cannot be these centres. And then there was a rise in crime incidents.”

Closing Mexico drug rehabilitation centres without offering anything in their place does not reduce addiction. It pushes it out of sight, and the cartels move in to fill the space.

The Push to Regulate Mexico Drug Rehabilitation Centres

Some officials now argue for formalising anexos rather than shutting them down. State legislator Alejandro Arias has been pushing for a law to bring Guanajuato’s centres under the supervision of the state health secretariat. Regulation, he argues, could fix deficiencies in infrastructure, food standards, and staffing, while making it harder for cartels to take root inside them.

Precedent exists elsewhere. In Mexico City and Chihuahua, anexos register with local health ministries and face regular inspections. Jalisco state has built a regulatory framework for addiction treatment, though enforcement remains uneven.

Guanajuato’s legislature voted the proposed law down in March this year. Some argued it invaded federal jurisdiction. Others said it over-regulated the sector. Arias suspects the real reason is simpler. “From there arises budgetary, medical, and care obligations that maybe the state doesn’t want to fulfil,” he says. He intends to reintroduce the legislation with changes.

At a recent meeting of anexo directors in Irapuato, attended by OCCRP journalists, threats dominated the agenda. Some directors had refused cartel demands and paid for it. Others had unknowingly admitted a rival gang member and faced the consequences. Some received retaliation from former residents alleging mistreatment.

The directors weighed whether to report threats to police at all. Doing so could make them look like informants. The cartels would then have reason to escalate. It is an impossible position.

“We are practically abandoned and that is what fills those of us dedicated to this with powerlessness,” one director told the room.

A Crisis Without Easy Answers

Mexico’s methamphetamine crisis will not be resolved by anexos alone. These centres, however flawed, are absorbing a public health catastrophe the state refuses to fund. Hugo Córdoba, drug project coordinator at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, describes how Guanajuato shifted from a transit point for narcotics into a “strategic territorial hub” for the cartels. The consequences now reach far beyond law enforcement.

At La Sagrada Familia, the routine goes on. After the night’s rounds, two men begin their stay without resistance. They receive a hose shower and a shave, then join the 55 others already there. For at least six months, this will be their world.

Whether it helps is genuinely uncertain. Methamphetamine is among the hardest drugs to quit. No reliable data on outcomes exists for Mexican addiction treatment centres of this kind. Pérez holds firm to what he knows. “We have a lot of faith that, with what we do, we can save a guy,” he says. “The miracle worked on me.”

That fragile belief, peer experience standing in for clinical training, and faith filling the gap where evidence should be, is what thousands of Mexicans are depending on to recover. Until the state steps in with something better, it may have to be enough.

Source: dbrecoveryresources