Whoops, forgot their names if anyone cares and is readying this thread.
Mackenzie Phillips (One Day At A Time)
Heidi Fleiss (whore / madame)
Dennis Rodman (drunken basketball play-ah)
Mindy McCready (train wreck country music singer)
Lisa DAmato (Americas Next Top Model)
Mike Starr (Alice in Chains)
Kari Ann Peniche (ex-Miss United States Teen)
Joey Kovar (Real World Hollywood)
Tom Sizemore (Actor, general drug addict dysfunctional mess)
Well, don't believe everything you read, Mr. Smarty Pants!
Celebrity Rehab is disgusting. I've watched Hoarders and Intervention both and will admit to being fascinated. I get a lot out of watching people share their personal stories about how they became the way they are today, learning about how much their loved ones want them to heal, and seeing how the professional staff works with them on an INDIVIDUAL BASIS to get better. Even though Intervention ends as the person goes (or doesn't) off for treatment, they update you.
I don't think this show would be for me. If it's for real, maybe I will watch an episode or two but somehow I think there would be a lot of made up drama.
this show airs on our music channel Muchmusic which Linds often watches for music vids.
When she watches portions it makes me nuts because half of it looks staged ala craptacular acting and I find the need to interject and give her some real words about reality shows.
I think for teens/tweens it may glorify these peeps and the addicitions. I hate hate hate that. No addicts don't live in a mansion with rockstars and get group hugs for a widdle tear and all the attention they crave 24/7 and wear rockstah clothing to support group.
I have a feeling it's realish. Why would anyone in the public eye, do this to their image. I watched it last night- there is no way Heidi Fliess is faking it.
In some respects, I think it is helpful for people recognizing what the signs of addiction are. Half the people on the show didn't think they had a problem.
Yeah, I think it's good to see these addicts. Where else on TV can a person see what a real-life addict is "like" and what behaviors are exhibited by these addicts.
Whomever said something above about "celebrity addicts" or "those with money" or some such aren't "Real" examples of addicts in "real life" or whatever.... is, IMHO, wrong.
Addicts, quasi celebrity or not, are addicts. It's the same. Most if not all of these addicts are broke-er than a joke, and have been through pure HELL in their lives.
Take The Kasey Johnson (sp?) death recently. Wealth is not any sort of cushion to the pain and destruction of addiction. At all. I think we all know that, don't we?
These "celebrities" may be:
1) being exploited by MTV (or is is VH1?) and;
2) May be exploiting their own addictions for their own (hopeful?) rekindling of a career or way to make a living.
What you see is real, though edited for the most dramatic, traumatic, for the interest of the viewer so that they watch the show, and the network can sell Ads.
That doesn't make what you see not "real life". Most people have never really known a true hard core addict. Unfortunately, I have, and what I see on the screen on "Celebrity Rehab" echos very true to what I experience in knowing a REAL life addict.
Yeah, I think it's good to see these addicts. Where else on TV can a person see what a real-life addict is "like" and what behaviors are exhibited by these addicts.
Whomever said something above about "celebrity addicts" or "those with money" or some such aren't "Real" examples of addicts in "real life" or whatever.... is, IMHO, wrong.
Addicts, quasi celebrity or not, are addicts. It's the same. Most if not all of these addicts are broke-er than a joke, and have been through pure HELL in their lives.
Take The Kasey Johnson (sp?) death recently. Wealth is not any sort of cushion to the pain and destruction of addiction. At all. I think we all know that, don't we?
These "celebrities" may be:
1) being exploited by MTV (or is is VH1?) and;
2) May be exploiting their own addictions for their own (hopeful?) rekindling of a career or way to make a living.
What you see is real, though edited for the most dramatic, traumatic, for the interest of the viewer so that they watch the show, and the network can sell Ads.
That doesn't make what you see not "real life". Most people have never really known a true hard core addict. Unfortunately, I have, and what I see on the screen on "Celebrity Rehab" echos very true to what I experience in knowing a REAL life addict.
Re: "In some respects, I think it is helpful for people recognizing what the signs of addiction are. Half the people on the show didn't think they had a problem."
I have two friends that are addiction counsellors and they both said that the hardcore addicts they have seen have completely lost touch with what "problem drinking" looks like. When asked how much they drink in a day or a week, they would report numbers like 18 beers a day because it was so much lower than what was really happening and they thought it was a better estimate of what "normal" people drink in a day.
An interesting aside about this season of Celebrity Rehab, and it's not really a spoiler because it's been all over the news, is that Former Miss whatever Kari Ann and Mindy "trainwreck" McCready are roommates. Mindy steals Kari Ann's computer or hard drive or whatever and ends up sending a video she finds on there to the tabloid news. It's the "nude tape" of Kari Ann and Mr and Mrs McSteamy that was all over the intertubes a while ago. Mindy denies leaking it, of course.
Why this is interesting is that I just finished watching the latest episodes of Sex Rehab with Dr Drew (I have no idea how I got sucked into that but there ya go) and Kari Ann was on that as well. She ended up getting kicked out of the facility and I guess what treatment she had didn't stick. Hope she does better with these issues.
I watched this today and was pretty disgusted. Heidi Fleiss is so, so sad it breaks your heart. Then she was talking about how Tom Sizemore beat the shit out of her and how every time she even thinks about him she gets sick to her stomach, and WHO DO YOU THINK the previews show as the next resident coming soon?
That pretty much destroyed any false sense that this show was designed in any small way towards helping these people.
Ick, get over it. Azusa is a pansy ass, he married an Asian chick, moved her back to Canadialand, thinks he knows it all. He is the number one wimpy dude, he should be used as an example what "not to do".
Wow, too funny fellow anons -- many years ago, I tried forging a conversation with "him" because, I too, had lived in Japan. His response was rather dickish. So have at him.
Azusa, just whatever it. The ARE being fuckwads so just ignore what they are saying. Seriously if you get angry about it it's just going to egg them on.
If you don't care what they think, they may not go away, but it will make life easier.
There's a Heidi Fleiss documentary floating around (it was on hbo on demand) that shows how she got all caught up with birds and stuff. Definitely not faking it.
David Drew Pinsky (born September 4, 1958),[1][2] best known as Dr. Drew, is an American board-certified internist, addiction medicine specialist, and radio and television personality.
Credentials
BA Amherst College[35]
MD University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine of USC
Residency Internal Medicine, Huntington Memorial Hospital
Board Certified, American Board of Internal Medicine[36]
Board Certified, American Board of Addiction Medicine[37]
Certified member of American Society of Addiction Medicine since 1990[38]
Member of American College of Physicians
Licensed Physician and Surgeon in the State of California since 1985[9]
This message has been edited by jeannien on Aug 17, 2012 4:45 PM
Kind of a stupid thing to say. Working in Rehab / Recovery is fighting a mostly losing battle, regardless of your credentials, intelligence or determination. The astronomically high relapse rates on drug & alcohol addiction are no big secret. Are they the fault of the institutions and establishments that doggedly attempt to combat it?
I'm sure Drew and the countless other medical professionals out there trying to combat this ridiculously resilient disease struggle daily with trying to remember - to convince themselves that the failure is ultimately NOT theirs. They can only offer a helping hand. They are powerless if the victim won't take it (or lets go).
Hate him for being on TV or whatever, but...a fraud? Base on this?
One might also argue that the "personal gain" he has achieved by "exploiting the sick" has also brought some much needed public attention (and possibly more much-needed funding) to some serious problems. Does the fact that he puts this stuff on TV / Radio somehow invalidate his efforts? I dunno. Are the professionals on, say "Intervention" perhaps more credible, somehow? If so, I'd opine that MTV can reach a much bigger audience than TLC, and one of a far more important demographic, from a preventive point of view.
I'm prepared to be wrong, but sounds like kneejerk contempt to me.
It's not just this one thing, Whitey. I remember Love Line and I've seen a couple of these shows. What he does doesn't strike me as real treatment. It looks more like exploitation. He's not breaking any new ground or anything.
And not only that, he's stopped doing this show. I wonder why? You can't defend putting Heidi Fleiss and Tom Sizemore in the same "recovery" facility at the same time. You just can't. It's all for TV.
I'm with Whitey. I wouldn't know 'breaking new ground' in addiction treatment if it shot me full of heroin.
I think Dr. Drew is a bit "Hollywood" in the sense that he looks like a guy whose had a botox shot or two - but I assume if what he was doing was really bad medicine, that there WOULD be representatives of the governing bodies of the various certifications he's got all over his ass.
I used to listen to Love Line, and for the most part he amazed me with how quickly he could cut to the real issue. Some chick would be going on about her issue with a boyfriend and he'd go - "Wait, let me ask you - were you sexually assualted by a trusted family member or friend as a kid?" - and the girl would just open up and - well, it seemed like that girl was going to get help.
So not a huge fan of this type of shit anyway - but compared to every other thing we show up to goggle at in the colleseum, this hardly pings my radar for moral outrage. The people on this show come to him pre-FUBAR and his efforts are a finger in the dyke.
"[there] WOULD be representatives of the governing bodies of the various certifications he's got all over his ass" - said everybody that believed the government is going to "fix" something, ever.
It's a stupid reality show, which he quit doing, in favor of some other stupid show that doesn't involve people that DIE. And several have. No, this is not something anyone should be doing. Paying has-beens with drug problems to duke it out in TV is wrong. Intervention isn't much better, but watching Gary Coleman and Vanilla Ice get into a fist fight over "whatchoo talking 'bout Willis" isn't helping a soul.
Yeah, I agree it's gross TV. I said so in the above post. I'm not ready to critique Dr. Drew's addition therapy because I don't know. Maybe this is closer for you than it is for me.
BTW: Government fixes all kind of things quite well, actually.
Had to drive your car over dirt lately? Been in a plane crash lately? Swallowed prescription medication that killed you recently? Been raped by a marauding Hun? What a silly thing to say.
As silly as if I were to try to say that Government always gets it right, which of course it doesn't. We're way better off as monkeys WITH government than without it. Ask any Somalian.
Yes, because we're totally comparable to Somalia, Mr. Hyperbole.
Dirt roads? Check - there are actually several of these, still. See also: giant potholes that no one fixes until they assign a local news moron to go around and point to each one.
People get raped, all the time, and are treated horribly, routinely, as evidenced by Missouri douche.
Planes crash. Pilots drink and board, people run through airport with guns, and someone eating cheetos barely moved from their TSA stool. But grandma? Grandma is getting strip searched.
Pradaxa can kill you. So can Yaz. And a host of others that are on the market b/c Big Pharma finally lined enough pockets to allow them to advertise their shitty, nonessential drugs so that every moron in the country will run ask for it, then die of liver failure, blood clots, seizure, youhearthestufftheysayrealfastattheendofthosecommercials.
What a silly thing to ignore in favor of what you choose to believe, when everything is peachy for YOU.
Apparently they were simply attempting to walk home. From Politico.com:
The FBI probed a late-night swim in the Sea of Galilee that involved drinking, numerous GOP freshmen lawmakers, top leadership staff and one nude member of Congress, according to more than a dozen sources, including eyewitnesses.
During a fact-finding congressional trip to the Holy Land last summer, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of members, their families and GOP staff during a night out in Israel, the sources [said]. Other participants, including the daughter of another congressman, swam fully clothed while some lawmakers partially disrobed. More than 20 people took part in the late-night dip in the sea, according to sources who took part in the trip.
OK, is it fair to assume that the two anon posts above are the same person? And that you are the typically negative and pessimistic anon I generally spar with? Whatever, I'm going to.
Your first response is pretty preposterous, and I think you know misses the point entirely.
Your second one - please explain to me what is illustrated in that story that is 'wrong with Government?'
I see a story about a bunch of people going out - after work hours - on a trip and having fun jumping in some water in a hot place. Please note that I'm defending the right of a Republican Lawmaker to be drunk and to skinny-dip. I kept waiting for the part where someone got hurt, or they were violating Sharia law, or some kid saw the guy's dong and was scarred for life, or one of the staffers got groped or worse.
No one got hurt. These are people. This was good clean fun. Any outrage at that story is just plain silly. If your outrage was that the FBI investigated it at all and wasted our money because of some idiotic residual Puritanistic bullshit, I'm right there with you.
That said, if I were the pollster of that guy's opponent in KS, you'd bet I'd put it in an ad - because, well fuck him. The Democratic candidate (if there is even one) would still lose because is frickin' Kansas.
Yes, because we're totally comparable to Somalia, Mr. Hyperbole.
Dirt roads? Check - there are actually several of these, still. See also: giant potholes that no one fixes until they assign a local news moron to go around and point to each one.
People get raped, all the time (maybe not by Huns, just local criminals), and are treated horribly, routinely, as evidenced by Missouri douche. But, if you mean have we been invaded? There sure are a lot of Canadians around here.
Planes crash. Pilots drink and board, people run through airport with guns, and someone eating cheetos barely moved from their TSA stool. But grandma? Grandma is getting strip searched.
Pradaxa can kill you. So can Yaz. And a host of others that are on the market b/c Big Pharma finally lined enough pockets to allow them to advertise their shitty, nonessential drugs so that every moron in the country will run ask for it, then die of liver failure, blood clots, seizure, youhearthestufftheysayrealfastattheendofthosecommercials.
What silly things to ignore in favor of what you choose to believe, when everything is peachy for YOU.
Looks as if we've moved on since I last logged, but...
I'm not necessarily disputing that his shows are exploitative. In that respect, I was simply highlighting an upside to the fact that they were aired, anyway. Was Celebrity Rehab a good idea (probably not) that helped any of the participants? That's impossible for me to say. What is the success to failure ratio, though? Numerically, I have no idea, but am fairly certain that more are alive than have died. And would those people still be dead if they hadn't been on the show and received whatever treatment was attempted there?
Most likely, and quite possibly sooner.
However, my argument was against the assertion that he is a fraud. His choice of medium notwithstanding, I don't doubt that treatment was, in fact, attempted. And his credentials (which has already been covered) aside, I think he has proven time and again that he knows what he's talking about and knows what he's doing (from a purely clinical standpoint).
Call me naïve, but I believe he genuinely cares. Let's pretend for a moment that his and VH1 / MTV's motivations might be a bit different. There is no debating that he's making himself a fine living, but again - from a preventative perspective - what better cautionary tale than showing young idiots what's become of some of the people they may have once idolized and attempted to emulate (with certain obvious exceptions like Ms. Fleiss duly noted).
Yeah, it's trash. But that's what our culture has become. Fight fire with fire, I say.
But does anybody that doesn't know Tom Sizemore personally genuinely give a shit about his welfare? Of course not. I'm going to go ahead and call any outrage over this misplaced and most likely feigned or expressed solely for the sake of being outraged.
Same goes for the government bit, though that's gone a bit off the deep end for me. Yeah, ours is utterly laughable in many, many ways. But to discount it, entirely? If this is a game of some or none, let's ask around, say, Africa or Mexico and see if they'd like to trade.
Caucasian, please...u just mad to be mad.
P.S. This has become mostly to Anon, not Caps (whose politely worded perspective I can certainly understand, but with which I simply disagree).
It's true. We disagree. And I admit you can point to his credentials, whereas I can only give my opinion.
"Quack" may have been a better term to use for him than "fraud", since he is licensed and yadda, yadda. But ,I think he's motivated by his own fame. Celebrity Rehab was about ratings. Not medicine.
He's a carny and celebrities in trouble are his bearded ladies.
Not that I doubt your recollection, Hep, but that sounds to me like textbook "out of context".
But...fair enough. I'm not on a mission to change minds or anything.
But it should be said that my own personal experiences with the medical industry- as well as those of numerous loved ones - have proven time and again that "real" doctors (not on TV) are almost completely useless and full of shit, as well. So, the mere fact of one being on TV should have no bearing on one's perception of their legitimacy.
And, Anon...I can only speak for myself, but I keep talking about it when it interests me slightly and there's nothing better, more fun or more important that needs doing at the time. I just type things. I don't actually care about who feels what about Dr. Drew.
I don't have an "anon thing". You spoke. I replied, much like I did to Caps and Hep. In fact, you might be pleased to know that I don't care one bit that I don't know who you are.
I have always been one to bloviate, but as I haven't participated here in many years, many might not know me.
It wasn't out of context. It was straight up. There was a girl that was into piercing and Dr. Drew said that wanting body piercings was a warning sign of childhood sexual abuse. Almost everyone in the studio disagreed, but he pulled his smarmy "I'm a doctor," bullshit out to try and win the argument. You could tell he had read it in a textbook or medical journal and just refused to believe it wasn't true.
Keep in mind this was before piercings were everywhere. At the time I had my eyebrow pierced and I had to have a roommate do it because no place in New Hampshire would do facial piercings. I want to say sometime around 1993.
We can at least agree that most doctors, regardless of television exposure, are useless.
.
This message has been edited by Hepatitis_C on Aug 21, 2012 3:28 PM
I did some minor googling to try to corroborate Hep's claim that Dr. Drew said that piercing is a warning sign of childhood sexual abuse.
This is the closest thing I found:
"Dr. Drew: "In general, I have serious concerns about people who are interested in what I call "aggressive piercing" of the genitalia. In my experience, almost without exception, there is a history of some sort of abuse and getting this type of piercing is a way of acting out. "
That's pretty much the same spiel, but he was talking about facial piercings at the time.
He's wrong about the genitalia too. Hell, there was a time in the late 90's when it was hard to find a girl without a hood piercing. They couldn't have all been molested.
He's the same kind of quack that would have said men wanting long hair was a sign of mental illness if he had been doing his thing in the 50s.
.
This message has been edited by Hepatitis_C on Aug 21, 2012 3:53 PM
It looks like a "good" group of sad addicts this time!!!![[linked image]](http://blog.vh1.com/files/2009/05/celebrity_rehab3_cast2.jpg)
![[linked image]](http://i333.photobucket.com/albums/m386/f-foxy/crying-indian.jpg)
That pretty much destroyed any false sense that this show was designed in any small way towards helping these people. 
