I’ve heard outrageous stories, and I know they’re true. Some rehab facilities—the kind that dispense daily back rubs and keep their celebrity patients on a “replacement drug” treatment—will allow their famous clients to dictate the terms under which they’ll stay. One well-known pop singer once rented all the beds in an entire wing of a certain Southern California beach-side center just so she could be by herself. What kind of place would allow that? That’s not how we do it. It doesn’t matter who you are. Here at Pasadena Recovery Center, you have a roommate. We know what works. We know how to treat drug addiction and the patients don’t. We realize that as a well-off, world-famous entertainer, these people haven’t had to have a roommate for many years—if ever—but it’s part of the process here. Now, I won’t say that we don’t make certain accommodations and allowances. When you have a celebrity in treatment it changes the dynamic of the relationship with the other patients. You have to address it. You can’t ignore the fact that news helicopters are flying overhead and there are roving packs of paparazzi circling the streets and climbing the trees on the perimeter. That has to be dealt with for everybody’s sake.
In 2010, I felt that I could do more good operating an outpatient program, so I started Hollywood Recovery Services from the 1924-vintage, twelve-story Taft Building at Hollywood and Vine. I patterned the setup after Buddy Arnold’s Musicians Assistance Program, which helped me so much. Since it was an outpatient facility, we didn’t have to worry about keeping “heads on beds” and we avoided a lot of the business headaches I tend to associate with the “recovery industry.” However, it was a business, and like all startups, it would take a while to see a profit. I took on a financial backer.
Maybe I should have been a little more discerning. My backer was a longtime heavyweight in the Los Angeles pornography industry who had found salvation for himself and some of his immediate family through recovery meetings. He was a gung-ho devotee of the philosophy and he liked my idea to start a program. He also liked that we had a track record through the television show, which I’ll tell you all about in the next chapter. We had worked with some notoriously difficult cases in front of the cameras that had caught his eye. In particular, the actor Jeff Conaway. His appearance on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew was tragic. He was belligerent and half-crippled, a sad, lost soul a million miles removed from Kenickie, the singing, dancing golden-boy hood he had played in the movie Grease. He was an addict and had been for a long time. His attempts to clean up had failed and when he checked in, he was close to total collapse from the previous night’s coke-and-whiskey binge and practically an invalid from a long-term back injury. It was painful to see any human in this condition and so desperate and in need of help, but, even so, he had a fighter’s spirit and a junkie’s fatalism. His outbursts made audiences tune in and our backer saw how hard Drew, Shelly Sprague, and I had worked to help him. Our team had a certain marquee value that appealed to our benefactor. Unfortunately, he came from an industry accustomed to quick profits that far exceeded the investment costs. It also didn’t help that Porn Incorporated was caught in an epic tailspin brought on by the Great Recession and the proliferation of freely available smut on the Internet. We folded in 2012. When the call came to inform me that our sponsor was ending our partnership, he didn’t even have the decency to make it himself. He had an underling do it.
“Bob? There’s going to be no more funding.”
“What?”
“We’re going to need you to clear out the suite and turn in your keys. We’re also going to need you to give back the car we leased for you.”
There was no point in arguing. It was over. “Okay, I’ll have it all wrapped up by the end of the month.”
“Oh, no. That won’t work. We’ll need you out and the car back in five days.”
And that was that. We closed up shop. Porn barons are profit-driven. Extremely so. It was a noble experiment and it could have worked given time to grow. Two years just wasn’t long enough. I like to think we could have made a difference, but addiction treatment is a tricky thing. No one, and I mean no one, is ever going to successfully beat the monster that is a drug or alcohol habit until they want sobriety for themselves. I can lead, I can show the way, but if they’re not ready for what I have to offer, I advise them to stay away until they are. Do you want to know the real secret to sobriety that I’ve learned after all these years of rough-and-tumble personal experience? The main one is this: Don’t drink and don’t take drugs. You can mainline that as the straight dope.
SHOWTIME
In February of 2007, I had spent a long day at Las Encinas counseling my clients. Twelve straight hours dealing with the pain and frustration of addiction. Beyond that, they’d suffered additional traumas. Childhood violence, sexual abuse, personality disorders. I had listened to this litany of hurts and had tried to maintain my professional distance, but these were real people and I was affected by their stories. One kid in particular had gotten to me,
