He’s treated over 10,000 people for opiate addiction around the world, virtually overnight. Meet Dr. Andre Waismann, inventor of the acclaimed Waismann Method.

Rumored to be treating celebrities such as Amy Winehouse, Waismann nicknamed “Dr. Wash,” is just hoping to teach as many doctors as possible the fastest, painless and most effective method — in his opinion — for treating opiate addiction.

Based at the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, Israel, Waismann is on the frontlines of more than one war. Not only is he single-handedly revolutionizing the way medical professionals look at and treat opiate addiction, his hospital is also treating the victims of the ongoing missile attacks launched at innocent civilians from Gaza. The terror, he notes, hasn’t stopped foreign patients from coming to his clinic.

Not a fan of the media world or promoting himself, Waismann tells ISRAEL21c that: “I used to live in Tel Aviv, but moved to Barzilai to teach this method to other doctors. I believe that what I do should be available and free to the people.”

Drug addiction, he says, is misunderstood. People use drugs to feel high and it results in a neurological medical illness, he says. However, detox clinics today focus on the psychological and social aspects of addiction. Addicts are treated as pariah. Today’s available treatments are painful and their effects questionable, he says. This is a bad thing for a number of reasons. One is that an addict on the street also increases the spread of AIDS and hepatitis to the public at large, he says.

Supervised by Israel’s Ministry of Health, Dr. Waismann is a surgeon and intensive care doctor by training. “I use more than medicine,” he says. “Heroine addiction withdrawal symptoms lead to vomiting and are terribly painful,” he says. To rapidly overcome the pain aspect, Dr. Waismann puts his patients under general anesthesia for four hours and during this time he washes opiates out of their brain.

He then gives the patient a cocktail of medically approved drugs, to block the opiate receptors in the brain. The whole treatment from start to finish takes 36 hours.

Called the ANR Method for (Accelerated Neuroregulation), Waismann is at the same time able to reverse both the opiate dependency and its symptoms. The treatment works on heroine, methadone, subutex and prescription opiates. While the cost of treatment is high at 8,600 Euros, Waismann also treats people with medical insurance in Israel, such as wounded soldiers who have become addicted to painkillers.

If anything is revolutionary about his method, it’s not in the process, but in the way he perceives addiction, he tells ISRAEL21c when asked about the controversy surrounding his method. “My method, it’s not controversial,” he says. People are now going to clinics to get treated for addiction, and there are those in the medical profession “who don’t think it’s right to bring drug addicts to a hospital. That’s where my treatment might be considered ‘controversial,'” he says.

Featured in USA Today, the LA Times and more, journalists and paparazzi take note: you will be disappointed if you ask Waismann about treating Winehouse or any other celebrities. “He’ll deny it,” warns his assistant Mali, well-trained in ensuring high level standards of patient-doctor confidentiality are met.