Celebrity Rehab – Helpful or hurtful?
In case you missed it (like I did), the new season of Celebrity Rehab began a couple of weeks ago. I’m just now catching up, and in the process of trying to watch everything on VH1.com, ran across a blog post about Drew Pinsky and his interview in GQ magazine. When Vargas-Cooper asks Pinsky if...
Can therapists do this?
The other day, a friend and I were playing the “which professional on Celebrity Rehab would you be?” game. You know… kind of like “which Sex & the City character are you most like?” or “who would you want as your partner on Dancing with the Stars?” — but a little less mainstream. In fact,...
Denial: Not exclusive to addiction
Dr. Drew made a comment a couple of episodes back (Ep. 306 “Triggers”) that I was pretty surprised to hear: “Addiction is the only disease that you have to convince people that they have.” I highly disagree with this statement, and think that denial is a large part of many mental illnesses… and even some...
Addicted to Addiction
“Currently, we are concerned about young people using the Internet, eating too much, spending irresponsibly, and being promiscuous, and these worries are being expressed in the language of addiction. The medical terminology helps us to believe we’re avoiding moralization or blame, and popular science has given us a sound bite of pseudo-neurology to support our...
The Best Worst
This is a danger in all group therapy of being the “best worst”. If you can’t be the best, best you can always be the “best worst”. Anyone who has been inpatient knows what I'm talking about. There are some patients that want to make sure you know that their eating disorder is the...
The Dr. Drew Response
Lately, I’ve been reading Dr. Drew’s latest book, “The Mirror Effect.” It addresses celebrity narcissism and the extreme behavior that goes along with it. Dr. Drew does a great job at highlighting what has become typical tabloid material – multiple stints in rehab, sex tapes, drug use, eating disorders, etc. – and explaining the self-destructive...
A Treatment Refresher
While I do have several new posts on the way, I want to highlight a couple of older Grey Thinking posts (some are several years old! I bet you were not reading GT two years ago) that talk specifically about treatment, your attitude toward treatment, recovery expectations, etc. While there are a couple of people...
It's not about what you are doing
Since I have a serious Dr. Drew Pinsky addiction (irony intended), I was really sad when his podcast was cancelled. Thankfully, Celebrity Rehab 2 and Sober House came out shortly after the podcast ended, so I was able to watch those repeatedly for awhile. When VH1 stopped running CR2, I read his books. Now, having...
In tune with each other
I’ve been reading Dr. Drew’s book, “Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic.” There are a million things that I could talk about concerning this book, so don’t be surprised if it’s referenced several times in future posts. Tonight, the following quote really caught my attention: “Most believe [addicts] connect around a common...
Anti-ED Coach
I’d never heard of a “Sober Coach” until watching VH1′s “Sober House.” In the last episode (I think), Will, who is Seth’s Sober Coach, accompanies him to his first concert and make sure that nothing happens to jeopardize his sobriety. While watching this I thought, “Well that’s convenient — I could use someone protecting me...
Greyisms (like Buseyisms)
It’s been a little while since I talked about Celebrity Rehab, but I have been meaning to write about Gary Busey’s “Buseyisms” (by the way, I highly recommend that you watch this — it’s less than two minutes long). Buseyisms are really just made-up acronyms. Backward acronyms, I guess, but you start with the acronym...
You as your own case manager
“I wish that all these guys were going to stay clean, I really do. I’ve just seen it so many times that I can tell when someone’s really willing to do whatever it takes and when someone’s willing to do what they think it should take. And it’s just not going to work like that,...
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