I caught a couple of episodes of this and it completely blew me away for a number of reasons.
From EW.com - there is some discussion here, some cynical comments about Dr. Drew…
But this collection of addicts demonstrate the issues one has in facing their behaviors; facing the dishonesty that creeps in when you become a habitual drinker/user; and looking to replace dysfunctional behaviors with healthy ones.
It is a very long road…but it is worth the struggles.
What I found disappointing about this show was that it glosses over what happens at AA meetings. There has to be some kind of a way that what happens at AA meetings can be described in a way that protects the anonymity of the people who go there; but that educates people unfamiliar with 12 step programs.
Any way you look at it, the experiences of McKenzie Phillips and her participation with this group – adds tremendously to what the others are going through – as McKenzie not only had a very long time of dysfunction with her father using – but also experienced an unusually long time of sobriety before she fell off the wagon.
The show I saw involved a few characters that were not mentioned in the video…
Heidi Fleiss and her old boyfriend Tom Sizemore. Sizemore seems to be a really nice guy, and Fleiss is in complete denial about her condition. Sizemore will probably make it to sobriety and hold onto it because he has watched his good friend Robert Downey Jr., who has managed to create a recovery that everyone watching realizes is well worth striving for.
Unlike Dennis Rodman and a few others, Sizemore “gets” and understands that he has to go through some pain to get to the other side.
There was a girl that took off her top and had the musician bass player guy painting a bikini top on her boobs…neither one of them seemed to realize what they were doing was not right; and they did it in front of Rodman and Sizemore and asked them if they wanted to be a part of it. Sizemore said no; Rodman was just sitting there not really acknowledging what was happening.
That same girl had flashed all the men in the program earlier on and during the show I watched last night – she called up her buddies and had them pick her up.
Now I’m going to be waiting a few weeks before the next episode…but want to see what happens next.
the episode I saw was “acting out”-
Triggers
All of them are worth watching…you can see them all at VH1 – but the triggers one really hit me as familiar.
