Celebrity Rehab: The Horror

Seriously, where is it? And that’s not the only horror we witness this week. There’s plenty to go around for everybody, not to mention all that healthy trauma.

I’ve had my share of trauma in my life. Without going into specific events, I’ll just say that I have more than a few things in common with these people. I had my brushes with drugs, abuse and some fleeting fame but the closest I can come to what some of them are going through is my cousin and how he was after Vietnam.

You had to walk on eggshells around the guy and never bring up anything to do with that period of time, and the only thing anyone ever said about him was that he was a confirmed bachelor. He still is and it isn’t because he’s gay. It’s because he’s got PTSD and never got better.

He wasn’t into drugs, though he did drink enough one night to spend a very entertaining evening in the local drunk tank. Most of the cops knew him and after a sit-down, he never did it again.

Still, every once in a while you could catch him staring off into space or he would ask us kids completely inappropriate questions, like did i know that it’s easier to carry someone while they are still conscious, even though your arms are slicked with blood. Or how he hated Nixon, almost as much as he hated the sound of a lawnmower. I never did understand that one.And so we come to Mikey. He is going through his own traumatic and ultimately psychotic, withdrawal. Remember what I said about coming off of methadone last week, how it can be worse than coming down from heroin? It sure looks pretty bad for Mike.

They need to find something better for drug addicts than that shit. Maybe it isn’t cut with crap like street drugs, but it does a number on people and why would you replace a habit with another one that’s just as bad? I’ll tell you why. To keep them from robbing people and spreading their diseases on the streets, that’s why.

The nice polite guy who said please and thank you to Shelly? Gone. Replaced with a filthy mouthed psychotic. It’s day two and wake-up time. We have a replay of Mike and his vampirism. Dude HATES the lights. He’s used to dark hotel rooms and the even darker recesses of his mind.

Heidi isn’t doing too well either and they have to bleep out most of what she says. I still love her, by the way. I have a super soft spot for people who have an excellent bullshit detector and live their lives authentically.

They show Lisa on the treadmill, getting in a nice work out since she isn’t really detoxing, maybe just hungover, and Dr. Drew has to take Mikey’s vitals since he probably scared Shelly with all his swearing. He asks for more valium and the good doctor lets him have some.

He is withdrawing HARD. Here is how Dr. Drew describes what he is going through- take the worst flu that you have ever had, put your organs in a vise and throw in vomit and diarrhea.

This is not about quick fixes, there will be no overnight blood swapping while you rest comfortably with an I.V. full of barbiturates. This is hell, and the people around you can start to look like demons, as we will soon see.

The morning meeting is another warm-up and Bob wants you to talk about your lowest low. Right when you are feeling like shit.

No one is raising their hands so he gives them a little pep talk about there being a light at the end of the withdrawal tunnel. I like how he doesn’t get into any psychobabble. I hate that shit. All that “how do you FEEL?” can drive a person mad.

I prefer the stories and logical steps. Tell me what you did wrong, we’ll try to figure out why and then map out a plan to make things better. Tell the person that they have a shoulder to cry on, give them gentle words of encouragement and be the Daddy they never had. Be Dr. Drew. No wonder everyone is in love with him.

Mack is the first to talk about her low point since she is an old hand at all this. She describes her drugs slipping out of her undies and falling down her pant leg in the airport security line. She got caught when she tried to cover them up with her foot. Oopsy.

That isn’t even the worst part. THAT would be when she used her son to try to get them not to press charges. “I’m a mom, think of my son and what this will do to him, please! ” Talk about a low point. Using your status as a mom to get out of drug charges and be free to use some more is horrifying, but that’s the mind of an addict for ya.

Mindy’s turn. Her story just keeps getting worse. I didn’t google her because I want to let the story unfold each week, but that asshole baby-daddy of her just keeps sounding better and better.

She says that her worst moment was when she was in the hospital, beaten to a pulp, and STILL she didn’t want to press charges on her boyfriend. She also tells the group that she had been beaten way worse but she never called police and hid it from her family and friends.

If she did call them, he said he would kill her, and his favorite thing was choking. The bastard choked her almost to the point of dying many times but she stayed because she thought she was in love. When Dr. Drew says that “That’s not love, it’s intense but it sure isn’t love,” you just have to wonder how many women are in that exact situation at this very minute. It gives me chills.

Plus, a side note. My puppy Boomer is getting her lady parts removed at the time of me writing this so I’m a little freaked out. She has a heart murmur but our Vet is amazing so I’m sure she’ll be fine. Still….. our family has lost five dogs in the last two years and I couldn’t take another one. (update: she’s fine, a little stoned but fine.)

Let’s ask her how she’s doing:

Moving on to Dennis. How can you not smile when we come to Mr. Rodman? His denial is EPIC. It’s turning into a running joke already. The Bob’s giggles when he asks him what his low was, not really expecting much of an answer, I’m sure.

DenRod says that he’s been thinking about it (yay, progress!) but he can’t come up with anything. Oh, well. There went the progress. I bet that he can’t think of just one because there’s so much to choose from! HE says it’s because he’s always at an even keel but I like my theory better.

Bob asks him about the Newport police, who it turns out have been called to his house 70 times. Seventy freaking times! So easy to overlook, I know.

He’s seeming more and more like a child to me. God, where to begin. Heidi interrupts here and says that he’s speaking in riddles. A riddle I might get.

I think that Dennis says that it’s okay since they have days to figure him out, but I can’t be sure. I rewound and rewound but I need more subtitles, VH1! Help a recapper out, would ya?

Heidi brings up what he said last week about being above everyone else and then Mack chimes in, saying that he is separating himself from the group and unfairly compartmentalising everybody as THEM, the addicts while he is on a different level.

She has a point, I’m sure, but I hope to God that she doesn’t turn into an armchair psychiatrist in every damn episode. And is it me or does she sound like an annoying hippy? Telling Rodman to “Get real, man,” and using that been there, done that groovy speaking voice that she probably learned before she could drive.

She tells him to at least try to get something out of their sessions and not waste his and everyone else’s time (my words).

Seriously, if you aren’t helping in these types of circumstances, then you are probably hurting them. Or just giving me a reason to laugh, which is fine since i cried through half of this episode.

But, still. The group is spending so much precious time getting him to admit that he has any sort of problem, time that could be spent addressing issue is being occupied by a guy who mey NEVER admit he has a problem.

It’s the end of group and Mikey is out on the patio, pacing and swearing at his notebook. He flips off the camera and kicks his book across the ground. Oh, gee. This is not looking good. He glares at the cameras some more and looks like he’s about to do something stupid. He needs supervision.

And who gets to babysit him and make sure that he doesn’t harm anything or anybody while he is in this lovely state of his? 80 pound Shelly. They should enlist Rodman, give him something to do while he’s there all bored and stuff.

Mikey keeps swearing and Shelly keeps asking him how he feels and what his symptoms are. He has no patience for the resigned tone she uses as she glares at him over her glasses. It’s a little annoying, no doubt about it. When you are feeling like shit, the last thing you want is to have someone babysitting you and acting like they’d rather be anywhere else. But he’s being a prick and that doesn’t help either.

He wants his good buddy heroin back and the valium is no substitute for the kind of hardcore self medication he is used to. He does notice a tree, though. It’s probably the first time in ages that he has noticed anything around him that wasn’t in powder form and he acts like he should get a flipping medal for it.

Shelly continues to glare and he tells her that he hates life and then asks her if she has any diet pills on her. He wants them because he is eating that delish rehab food and doesn’t want to get fat.

I think that he is the type of fiend who will take anything they can get their grubby little paws on. If he were an alcoholic, he’d be guzzling the rubbing alcohol right along with Marilyn Dukakis. If you invite him into your home, you better have the baby aspirin locked up, otherwise he’s sure to come out of your kid’s bathroom with an orange tongue.

The cameras are bothering him which is understandable. Out of all the celebrities here, he is the least used to being filmed or photographed. He’s not the least photogenic, that one is all Heidi, but the last time someone stuck a camera in his face was probably an old Alice in Chains video.

Wow, he looks terrible. I wouldn’t want to be on camere either, if I were him.

Dr Drew comes out to deal with him and take some of the heat off of poor Shelly. He tells him that his mind is confused and disorganised because of the damage he has been doing to his brain for the past 17 years. Shouldn’t he know that already? Have you ever seen a guy less prepared for what he was going through? I thought that he’d already been to rehab several times, and I wonder if he was this surly in the past.

Drew distracts him from his pain by asking him pertinent questions, like do you want to change your life (yes) and do you know that if you don’t get better, you could die? He says that he doesn’t care. The poor guy is upside down and backwards. I can only imagine how bad this must be for him.

He does calm down a bit after talking to the doctor and I wish they would have hospitalised him like they did with Steven Adler last year. Little do I know that it’s going to get worse.

In the middle of the night he pukes all over the side of the bed. He’s polite enough not to do it on the side that separates his bed from Joey’s, but the politeness ends there as he does it again and again. The next morning he leaves the room without cleaning it up. Shelly is walking down the hall when she is hit by a wall of vomit air.

Were you wondering, like me, why in the hell Joey didn’t wake up from the stench? It turns out that the bulk of his withdrawal is being handled by his coke damaged sinuses and he can’t smell a freaking thing. Thank God.

Shelly sprays the room with an entire can of Oust and we get a nice close up of puke that resembles the digested contents of an entire Hometown Buffet. This dude can’t do anything in moderation, clearly. And once again, I love you guys so I will spare you the visual.

But, holy cow! First a black puss filled hole and now copious amounts of vomit, peppered with generous quantities of cursing. Gee whiz, Mikey. Nobody said that you had to act out the entire Exorcist movie all by yourself. But hang on a little while. The devil hasn’t quite shown up yet. I believe her name is Kari Anne and won’t it be fun to let her take over the head spinning duties for a change?

Mikey lets Shelly clean up the mess while he goes off to get his morning cup of coffee. He also forgot to tell anyone that he puked in the shower, wiped it on his towel and then threw it into the washer. Joey comes out to inform Shelly that there is corn in the washing machine and would she or the big orderly (Can’t remember his name) like some? Cute. I wish that everyone dealt with coming out of a druggie haze with his sense of humor. He cleans out the machine too, which was nice of him.

He jokingly asks Mike what he had for dinner and …..I’m sorry. Why is there a black cat behind Mikey? This is getting spooky. I don’t remember any cats in the rehab last year, and I’m not high so maybe it crawled out of Heidi’s mop of hair. I’m going to go with that explaination.

Heidi and Lisa are chatting and Heidi asks her if she thinks that she has a problem. She says no but when “things,” meaning drugs, are there, she does them. That’s how it all starts, my dear, that is how it all starts.

Dr. Drew had her write down a brief history of the important events in her life and they sit down to go over it together. She wrote down her parent’s divorce, the subsequent ugly custody battle and moving in with her mom and her new boyfriend when she was in the third grade. She calls the boyfriend the devil and the tears start to flow.

She would come home from school to find him in his undies, fondling his erection in front of her. When she told her mother about, mommy dearest yelled at him but nothing changed and Lisa learned a harsh lesson that day- that her mother was controlled by the men in her life and that Lisa and her sister had no one but themselves to rely on.

Unfortunately, when you are a little third grader, you can’t protect yourself, and that bastard started molesting her in the afternoons. Take a deep breath because it is going to get worse.

Lisa did the only thing that she could. While he was touching her she would pull the pillow over her head, go “lalalalalalala” in her head and rock back and forth to block it all out. She still does it at night before she goes to sleep and when someone sees her do it, it scares them.

This is where the doctor tells her that she is a full-on addict. She seems calmed by this news, I’ll guess because it is such a relief to finally face everything and have someone to help her through it. I don’t even want to think about where she could end up if she didn’t have this opportunity. Working for someone with less morals than Heidi would not be out of the question.

They show her crawling into bed that night, rocking herself to sleep and it breaks my heart. Just tears, Gasmii, just tears.

Where is her abuser? Is there a Statute of Limitations on this type of crime? I am not an idiot, I know that it is hard to prove, but what is the chance that he is doing this to someone else, that some other little girl isn’t rocking herself to sleep at night? The mind reels.

The next morning, Shelly starts an AA style meeting out on the patio by saying her name and the fact that she’s an alcoholic. She asks if there is anyone else there that identifies as an addict or alkie. Joey, Mikey, Heidi say hell yeah, and we come back to Dennis, our resident pontificating omnipotent prognosticator.

You see, mere mortals, His Highness could quit whenever he wanted, he just doesn’t want to. He says that he doesn’t do drugs, and alcohol won’t kill him. I’m sorry, I thought that they showed patients videos in these joints that show you in graphic detail exactly how it does just that. Maybe Mack could just re-enact her father’s painful death for him, and let’s not forget the people who die from driving drunk.

Anyway, his plan for living his delusional rationalised life is to do everything in balance.
Did some idiot give this fool a Depak Chopra book for Christmas or has he watched too many unsupervised showings of Kung Fu? He needs to empty his mind of that blather and start afresh. I suggest that he should start by burning anything he owns that says Affliction or Ed hardy, then maybe an MRI of that liver of his.

Oh, and those consequences that Shelly brings up? The arrests and so forth? It’s all solely because he’s famous. Really. He is amazing. He uses his fame to feel like he’s above everyone around him but it’s also to blame for all his problems. I don’t know where to start with this guy and I don’t want to let these recaps turn into my disection of his psyche, so I’ll leave that up to you guys.

He does have one serious problem, and that is adhering to his court order, so Dr. Drew has set up a meeting with Shirley, the administrator in charge of court ordered cases. Uh oh. Big trouble, Dennis. You got called to the principle’s office.

Here’s the deal. They called his lawyer and were told that he has 45 days of community service to do, in addition to rehab. He can do 100 hours of that while he is at the Pasedena Recovery Center.

Dennis says that his lawyer never told him that. Since we all know how well he listens, I’m going to bet that he tuned it out, thinking “whatever, you take care of it because that’s why I’m paying you.”

Finally we get our first taste of humanizing the great big amazing above it all superstar. Shirley tells him that he can fulfill his requirements by taking out garbage, ‘valcoming,’ and doing other cleaning as needed around the facility. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
He’s smart enough not to make a big stink because, let’s face it, he doesn’t want to go to jail any more than you or I do.

Shirley gets him started. I think she’s great, by the way. She has the air of a person who has seen it all and then hugged it into submission after slapping the shit ot of it. It being whatever fool or situation dares to try to pull one over on her. She sets him up in the kitchen where she shows him how to clean the pots and pans and use one of those restaurant dish washers.

The poor guy is sweating and doing things incorrectly, more than likely causing even more work for himself and whoever has to come in after him. You know what, though? At least he is doing something and getting a taste of how THEY have to live.

It’s time for another 12 Step meeting and Mike is in bed. The rules are the rules around the PRC and all meetings are mandatory, so it is a big deal that he won’t even bother to drag his ass to the room.

When Shelly tries to wake him up, he calls her a “fucking bitch” and asks her to go ahead and throw him out of rehab. He screams some more about her leaving the lights on when she walks out and then breaks the lamp with his pillow. Not wise, my friend.

She goes back in to make sure that he isn’t hurt and when she starts cleaning up the mess, he calls her a fucking cunt and tells her that he is never speaking to her again. Yay, Shelly! Dodged a bullet there. You never have to listen to his crap ever again!

Or so she thinks. At the staff meeting, she tells The Bob and Drew that he was combative and agitated and obviously unsurrendered (to the program, I assume), and that destruction of property is immediate grounds for dismissal. Uh oh.

Meanwhile, Mikey is outside at the big wooden table with headphones on, not speaking. Mack tries to get him to come out of his catatonia but all he wants to do is listen to whatever apocalyptic metal is streaming through his iPod and fantasize about killing the camera man.

Clearly losing it, he gets up and squats on the table, staring even more. It’s eerie. I’m waiting for him to snap and I sure wouldn’t want to be that camera man right now.
And he looks like he’s thinks he’s in the jungle tracking a target. I hope they’re not running Platoon or Apocalypse Now in the communal lounge. Maybe he just likes old Duran Duran videos.

Sorry, but this kind of cracks me up. I bet that he thinks that he looks menacing but to me he just looks like he’s about to take a particularly painful dump.

Mack wisely decides to get the hell away from him and heads over to the little patio where the other girls are congregating, smoking their ciggies and NOT having psychotic episodes.

Word spreads throughout the facility and Joey, who is turning into the teacher’s pet of the show, runs off to tell Bob and Shelley. I’m guessing that he probably doesn’t want to get into any fights, not while he’s sober anyway.

By the way, can anyone answer this question for me? Guys who do steroids, are they as strong as the guys who are just as built but don’t resort to drugs for muscle enhancement? I’ve always wondered about that since I would bet that any drug taken too much would contribute to bone loss or something. Just curious.

Bob comes out but Mikey won’t speak to him either. He just plays ring around the rosey with the cameraman who must be shitting his pants right about now.

Drew has no luck either and when even Shirley can’t get him to speak, they get the cops on standby just in case they have to put him into a 5150 hold at Huntington, the local mental hospital. So now Mike will have something in common with Britney Spears, other than really healthy relationships with their dads. I kid!

Just because Courtney Love says something, doesn’t make it true. Or written in the English language, for that matter. She and Rodman need to get together, they can tweet complete nonsense to each other and spare the rest of us.

Dr. Drew is not a quitter and he gives it one more shot. Mikey takes off his headphones and blames his behaviour on Shelly. He says that she knows how to push his buttons. I think that he’s being a big baby when it comes to Shelly since she refuses to coddle him. That, and the cameras, set him off.

So just because he finally opened his mouth, he gets to stay. What do you think, Gasmii? Was that fair to the other patients? Is Dr. Drew afraid that the hold will push him even farther away from treatment? All I can say is that they better send an orderly into that room with Shelley. She shouldn’t have to be alone with him until he stabalizes.

Now that Mikey’s little episode is over, we move on to the elusive Tom Sizemore. I really thought that this was a genuine case of stunt casting but when I spoke to the producer John Irwin, he assured me that he had been trying to Tom into rehab for three years now, and since he finally agreed to do it and Heidi gave the go ahead, they all jumped at the chance to treat him.

The bad news is that after waiting outside of the home that Tom shares with God knows how many other addicts, Tom bails out of Bob’s car after only a few minutes.

Bob tries to find him, trying to think like the druggie he once was, but comes up empty. It looked as though they didn’t even get him on camera except for one blurry paparazzi-style shot that looked like a picture of bigfoot in The Weekly World News.

And don’t tell me that you’ve never bought an issue of that Pulitzer winning newspaper, not even once when bat boy was on the cover? The chupacabra special? The article on the hairy little ape kids from the Mexican sideshow or Sadam meeting with Dick Cheney and the photoshopped pictures to prove it? REAL news, people, like aliens eating at the White House. Check it out, you’ll find it in between the pork rinds and the latest Soap Opera Digest at your local Piggly Wiggly.

So, Bob looks all around the area where Tom got out with no luck. I guess that Tom is better at hiding and smoking than Bob ever was, and how is Bob sure that Tom wasn’t just hungry? Didn’t he run right into a Pink Dot? Oh well, better luck next time.

You know what is so strange about the Sizemore situation? Other than the fact that he flushed an amazing career down the toilet? His drug of choice is METH. It’s the exact same “white trash” speed that his former lady-love Heidi has been doing out in the desert. They are more perfect for each other than ever, it seems.

Back in Pasadena, Mack and Mindy are giggling in their beds like freshmen dormmates that just found out how much they have in common, only for them it’s not liking cute boys and Pinkberry, it’s booze and trips to the penitentiary.

Mindy is laughing her ass off describing the time she was the drunkest when one of the scariest things that I have ever seen on television happens. She goes into a full-on seizure with Mack laughing even harder because she thinks that she’s acting.

Mack soon discovers that she’s not and yells for the nurse. They take her to the hospital and next week we will find out what caused the seizure and here’s a hint- it wasn’t the Boone’s Farm.

And so, the sadness continues. I hope that I’m not being too much of a downer, Gasmii, but with this show it can be hard not to get morose and upset. Plus, I made the big mistake of watching the Steve-O drug madness special this weekend. My God, that boy was a mess and he owes his life to Johnny Knoxville. You should watch it if you haven’t seen it already.

Have a good week everybody, and Boomer already broke her lampshade and may be addicted to previcox, for those of you wondering.

Love and Kisses,
Twunty McSlore