In May of 1994, I walked into a Hollywood chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time; while waiting for the meeting to begin I watched as an Academy Award-wining actor swept the floor. It was his humbling little task. It’s what kept him sober, he told me. I haven’t had a drink since. For that I am truly grateful.
In 2002 I walk out of my last AA meeting because the culture of recovery in Hollywood had changed. It had become a production of hip, slick, and cool. It had lost its shame. Hollywood sent recovery into the mainstream by putting a camera in the room, and turning the shame of hitting your bottom into a chance to be seen on TV.
When realty shows like “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” put a camera on an addict, it rewards them for bad behavior and puts off the chance at solid recovery. (Dr. Drew himself calls it a media intervention.) But it’s the financial rewards of Nielsen ratings that are helping to slowly kill actors like Charlie Sheen.
Hollywood paparazzi and media outlets flood the public with the comings and goings of troubled souls like Lindsay Lohan, plastering her image everywhere like a car crash you can’t stop rubber necking. Young actors in Hollywood and the MTV crowd see this stupid behavior and the limelight that goes with it and say to each other, “That doesn’t seem so bad. Let’s party.” It’s within that mode of exposure that the addict get’s lost inside the lens of Entertainment Tonight. Most addicts are at some level narcissist. Couple that with being an actor, and you have Siamese twins gazing blood shot into a reflecting pool of flash bulbs.
Hollywood’s long lists of addicts are simply egomaniacs with low self-esteem. However, once the actor/addict gets sober, most are just not that interesting in public and the media looses interest. The upside of this personal discovery are people like Robert Downey Jr.; who has flourished as a performer and person since he really “got it.”
A troubling new trend has taken hold of Hollywood’s production of addiction. The mixture of reality TV and recovery, taking regular people in deep despair and shining a light on their fall from grace so shoes and sugar-coated-cereal can be sold at commercial breaks.
One such show currently playing on The Learning Channel is, “My Strange Addiction.” In one episode the camera follows a young woman who is addicted to eating couch cushions, that’s right, couch cushions. The camera followers her through her day while she snacks on small bits of yellow foam, kept hidden in her handbag. A family member confronts her and they send her for a free therapy session with a doctor who asks, “So how old were you when your father left?”
There’s no follow up that proves handling her addiction on camera is helpful, so for all we know as viewers, she may be halfway through the living room furniture while waiting for the cameras to return so she can get motivated to do something more about her addiction.
It doesn’t matter what the addict is addicted to, it all acts out in the same way, the endless craving for more. For some, Hollywood has made that endless craving all about the fix of getting more media to cover their own demise.
Shame used to be that place where a person openly cowers in passive emotion while being in a public place. Now with the production of recovery in Hollywood, hair and makeup is put on a person’s shame before they smile for the camera and say, “Look Grandma I’m on TV. Can you Paypal me some money?”
There is no right or wrong way to get sober. There is only the quiet reach of the person who digs within for sobriety because they want it, not because they need it, and not because they want to be on TV. Capturing footage of that process for profit is something only Hollywood could tell the public is good for all involved.
Somewhere deep inside Charlie Sheen is a humble man that desperately wants to get out and sweep the floor. But as long as Hollywood keeps him in the limelight for his deplorable behavior he won’t “get it.” And if he manages to die from his addiction he’ll end up like the rest, a t-shirt or coffee mug sold on the Sunset Strip… A movie of the week at best.
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