by Bob Forrest
The work we all did at Las Encinas was trivialized by the media and the glare of celebrity. I talked to Drew about Leno’s show the next day. “This is bullshit, Drew!” I said. “We really should do a TV show about what we actually do here.” Drew was in agreement.
About a year earlier at Las Encinas, I had met a dapper TV producer who liked to wear sweaters and ties. Very avuncular and personable. His name was Damian Sullivan. He was there to visit someone close to him who was in treatment. The rehab world was alien to him. I sensed he didn’t know what to make of it, so I started to talk to him. I think he must have had the same perception of rehab that everybody else did: It was a joke. One hundred percent pure snake oil. I started to tell him the true story of what happens behind the walls of Las Encinas. There’s real work that goes on there, and peoples’ lives can be profoundly changed. I continued to see Damien when he’d visit and every time we talked, I brought up the idea of a doing a TV show at Las Encinas. Damian started to get interested and eventually thought that maybe a show about rehab would be worth doing. It wasn’t an easy sell. Damian took it to fifteen different networks and they all said, “No way.”
And then Britney’s public meltdown happened.
I laugh now when I talk to Damian. “We owe everything to Britney Spears,” I say. Once she was wheeled out of her house, the networks were suddenly interested. Celebrities admitted into rehab were hot news and VH1 jumped at the chance to do a show.
The idea we had was to show that when it came to treatment, celebrities were no different from anyone else despite what the media might portray. We pushed for doing a show that mixed celebrities with everyday people. VH1 thought about that for about two seconds before they said, “No.”
Damian and I started to push and pull to shape this thing. It had never been done. The lifted veil that would show what went on in a rehab facility required a deft hand to avoid the usual schlock aspects of reality television. After all, we’d show people’s most intimate, vulnerable, and private moments, unvarnished and untreated. We also had to make sure we had the right cast assembled. Some people are better on television than others, and Damian and I had to find people who could do their jobs and who could also work effectively under the ever-open eye of the cameras. Drew, of course, was a given, but the quest to put together a team would take some thought. One of the first people who came to mind for me was Shelly Sprague, who would be our resident technician.
I had been acquainted with her since the late eighties. She ran with the same crowd and had the same bad habits as I did back in those days. I had always admired her. No matter what she did to herself, no matter what kind of trauma or abuse she heaped upon her head, she managed to hold it together. She always had a decent place to live and did okay as a hairdresser. She was also a hard-ass, and that kind of no-nonsense attitude would be crucial for this gig. I spent a lot of years as an entertainer, so I knew instinctively what would work on a show like this. When I walk onstage, I know what to do. I don’t get flustered. I sensed Shelly was right for this gig. And I knew she was in the market for a job. I approached her.
“Hey, Shelly. How do you feel about reality TV?”
“I hate it, Bob.”
“What would you say if I offered you a job, but you’d also have to be on this show?”
“Is this one of those ‘either-or’ things?”
“Pretty much.”
“So what does that even mean, Bob? If I don’t do the show, I don’t get the job?”
“Well … yes.”
Fortunately, she came on board. For the celebrity patients, we looked to people we knew and had treated before. This is Los Angeles, and, as the tabloid media had already shown, there was no shortage of entertainers with dependency problems. However, the network had its own ideas about who was suitable. That first season, Steven Adler, the former drummer from Guns N’ Roses, was ready to go.
“Steven Adler would be great on this show!” I said. I pushed for him, but the network absolutely didn’t want him. No reason given, although I suspected it may have been an image problem. Steven suffered from a nasty drug dependency that he had battled since his days with Guns N’ Roses. He had suffered a stroke that was likely a result of all the abuse he had given his body during the height of his rock star fame. As a result he was left with an unsteady gait and a noticeable speech impediment. He could be difficult to understand because of it. Perhaps that was why the network was so dead set against having him on the show. When the second season came around, Steven still had problems with substance abuse and I brought him up again. This time the network was happy to have him aboard. It was crazy how it all worked. Unpredictable.
Through the grapevine, I heard that Valkyrie-like actress Brigitte Nielsen was at Cri-Help in North Hollywood. “Has anybody called her?” I asked. “I think she’d be a good candidate.” A producer from the show reached her at the center and told her about what we planned to do. She agreed right away. It’s pretty much how we found everybody for the show. We asked and they came … with network approval, of course. After that first season, after we had a hit, it became easier to find patients, but before the show made its debut, I started to get a little nervous that VH1 might not have the same goals as the rest of us. I worried that we would all look unprofessional, but I was also sure that wouldn’t be in the channel’s best interest. This show had the potential to do well for them, although in the back of my mind, I knew that something new like this would have no middle ground. Viewers would either love it or hate it.
Now, all this may seem a bit disingenuous coming from a guy who is best known these days as “that guy with the hat” on a reality TV series. I have had some real issues with some of the show’s direction. The producers shot an entire documentary about Jackass star Steve-O’s recovery with Dr. Drew. Steve-O, a limber, jocular guy who’d made an implausibly successful career out of performing ridiculous and dangerous stunts that generally involved his scrotum and a staple gun, had been a lifelong stoner and was engaged in a serious downhill run when he came to us. Drugs were only a part of his problem. He was also addicted to the camera. While he was supposed to be going through the program and the sober house follow-up, he was shooting segments in his room with his Jackass costars and his producer Jeff Tremaine. It was unbelievable. He’s managed to maintain his sobriety, but it couldn’t have been easy with all that entertainment nonsense going on around him. I have difficulty with that Hollywood, glitzy, exploitative aspect of the show. One thing I learned fast: Television is a ruthless, heartless business. It’s one with no friendships and few alliances, and it feeds and fuels itself on two items: money and bullshit. Take it too seriously and get too deeply enmeshed in the day-to-day, and it will make you crazy. Drug dealers have more ethics than television network executives, but I figured out a way to make the intrinsic greed work for me: I cut a deal. No agents, no lawyers. Just me.
I spoke with the executive producer of the show, John Irwin.
“Look, I think this show will do well and we’ll do a number of seasons with it. Start me out at two thousand dollars a week, and if we’re a hit, double that for the next season … and we’ll just progress from there.”
“How long do you think this show will run, Bob?”
“Five or ten years, easy. Besides, I’m putting my career at risk even doing a show like this. And I’m coming to you straight, no lawyers or agents.”
“You’re nuts, but okay. Deal!”
By the time we entered the third season, the lawyers came.
We all sat down at the big table. “Well, we hear that you have some kind of deal?”
“Yep.”
I had started to make pretty good money by then and the show had produced spinoffs like Celebrity Rehab Presents Sober House and Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew. I was being paid well for them too, but I also realized that come the fourth season, there was no way VH1 was even going to consider continuing with the deal that I had cut. I agreed to $5,000 a week with a 10 percent annual i
ncrease. I also specified that my contract never have any mention of or stipulations about any subsequent seasons. Television can burn you out, and I didn’t want to be trapped into another season if I wanted out. Five weeks on a set can be a grind, and I needed that option.
Besides the spinoffs we’ve done, we decided to take a new direction this time out. The new version of the show has no celebrities at all. All of our patients are just plain folks. Unlike celebrities, who have the resources to explore various treatment programs, people of average means don’t really have that option. We put out ads throughout the country on places like Craigslist.org and offered treatment to people who otherwise couldn’t afford it. There was no mention of VH1, Drew, or myself. We asked applicants to send in a short video of themselves and what their goals were. We were inundated with hundreds of responses from all over America within the first hour. Some, of course, weren’t genuine. Even though the ads hadn’t mentioned the television show, some of the respondents figured out what the deal was and applied as a way to get on the air and make a play for reality stardom. We had a good crew that was able to discern between those who wanted help and those who hoped to become the next Honey Boo Boo.
“Please help me!” said one wolf-eyed kid from a small town in Alabama.
“I don’t know where else to turn!” cried a girl with pink hair and a nose ring.
“I won’t live to see next year,” stated a young mother as her kids wailed offscreen and she calmly pulled on a cigarette, the curls of smoke framing her delicate face.
It was heartbreaking. These were people who had suffered and who had been victimized by bad treatment centers, and their plight put me in a strange and frightening position. Most of the patients on this new season have an abiding and unwavering faith that Drew and I are the only people who can help them. It’s the power of TV. That faith can be unnerving, because nobody can wave a magic wand and administer a cure. It takes work. Not only from Drew and me, but from the patients themselves. It’s a lesson I had to learn over a period of years as I faced down my own struggles. When someone says to you, “My crappy life would be different if only you were my counselor … and now it’s happening,” it puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. As a counselor, I’ve never experienced this kind of thing. Right now, as we get started with the show, it’s okay. It’s the honeymoon phase of things. It’s usually that way. But once the weeks start to roll by and the cameras don’t back off, it could all come crashing down. The words I would hate to hear are “Fuck you, Bob. You didn’t do anything. I’m going home.”
But that’s a possibility and I have to be steeled for it. While the show has gotten praise for its demystification of rehab and how we show that the path to redemption is navigable, there are also plenty of voices that say it’s sleazy and exploitative.
In 2009, the country singer Mindy McCready signed a contract to appear on the show. She was almost a living embodiment of every tragic female country star to ever have existed: failed relationships, pills, alcohol, domestic abuse, and underneath it all, a fragile vulnerability. She could have been a parody of the country music genre, but we all loved her and the audience did too. She gave all of us a huge scare when, on camera, she suffered a seizure and collapsed. All through her time on the show, she exhibited a concern and kindness for her fellow cast members and always seemed to care more about them than she did for herself. We were happy that she seemed to have conquered her demons when the season ended. But it wasn’t long before her name started to appear in the media again as her troubles once more started to consume her. In February of 2013, when news of her suicide came to light, I was heartbroken. We deal with troubled people and we try our best to help, but sometimes tragedies occur.
That’s the nature of what we do. All I can do is apply what I’ve learned and what I know and be compassionate, give encouragement, and, most of all, be real. It’s showtime now. A small army of crew people from VH1 runs about with clipboards and wireless headsets. The back end of the parking lot has been converted into an eating area by a catering company, and tables and folding chairs are set up underneath a makeshift awning that flaps in the mild breeze. Smoke curls up from a portable grill that an early-shift cook uses to prepare some kind of meat as well as chicken for lunch. In a room inside the facility, somebody has laid out breakfast: bagels, muffins, cold cereal, fresh fruit, and plenty of coffee. I stack some watermelon on my paper plate. In another room a large flat-screen television set gets the feeds from several different cameras throughout the center. The center has been converted to a film set and we’re all ready for another season under the unblinking eyes of the cameras.
TREATMENT: IT’S UP TO YOU
The morning is typical for late spring in Southern California. It’s softly overcast and pleasantly cool. The warm inland temperatures of the previous afternoon have drawn in overnight moisture from the Pacific that has settled as mist in the valleys and canyons and will remain suspended there until the sun burns it off in the early afternoon. It’s a weather cycle that will be repeated endlessly until the summer heat of July finally brings it to an end. I’m at the Pasadena Recovery Center and the television show is in its second week of production.
The center, on Raymond Avenue, is dead center in one of Pasadena’s older neighborhoods. It’s what could rightfully be called a “mixed use” area. There are several convalescent homes nearby and on the larger streets are chain supermarkets and beverage outlets like Starbucks. There’s no uniformity to the residences on the smaller streets, unlike newer Southern California neighborhoods that aspire toward uniformity. Here, there are small, single-family stucco homes not much bigger than shoe boxes and some stately multistory models built in a fake Craftsman style. Directly next door to the center is a sprawling old home with a sagging front porch that sits well to the rear of a weed-choked lot. A cracked cement footpath leads in from the sidewalk and is guarded by two forlorn-looking stone Chinese lions that have begun to crumble with age and time. There are ancient trees everywhere. Gnarled pines, shady oaks, and, since this is Southern California, towering palms hold up the gray skies and provide shelter to an amazingly rich variety of mountain birds down from the foothills. A ragged symphony orchestra of scrub jays, mockingbirds, and, oddly, feral, nonnative green parrots shrieks and squawks from the shelter of the branches and fronds and carpet-bombs pedestrians and parked cars with their caustic droppings. The cracked sidewalks are stained white with the stuff.
PRC itself is a low-slung ranch-style building that blends in to these surroundings well. Its front is glass with cheery-colored inserts that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a California public school during the 1960s. Near the entrance are molded concrete tables and benches made to resemble stone, and a nearby tub constructed of the same stuff and filled with sand. The smokers here use it as their communal ashtray. It’s well used. Inside, the floors are made of a light-colored wood and there are pressure-molded plywood chairs that mimic the famous Eames style, all organic curves and retro-looking swoops. Hung on the walls are photographs of rugged-looking islands surrounded by gently lapping seas. In the office, a few of the workers drink coffee, chat, and answer phones. Their voices float through the corridor, where a sleepy-looking security guard sits at a table with a sign-in book. Up on the roof is a lounge area for the residents with padded chairs, chaises, and potted plants. It’s a modest place. Certainly nothing too fancy, but it’s pleasant and has a warm and welcoming feel to it. It’s about as far as one can get from the style of some of the “high-end” oceanfront treatment centers that cater to the wealthy and resemble palatial resort hotels and spas. Whatever works, as the old adage goes. But what is effective when it comes to treatment?
From personal experience, I can attest that not a single person from my peer group—the hardest of the hard-core junkies—can ever tell anyone how they were able to get clean. There’s no set formula. For a very long time, I was convinced that love was the answer. I was wrong. I loved Layne Staley. Love didn
’t help him.
At the turn of the millennium, I had been clean for a few years and I had started to gain a reputation as someone who could talk to addicts. More importantly, they’d listen. Layne was the charismatic front man for the Seattle-based band Alice in Chains. He also had an increasingly heavy and debilitating heroin addiction. That habit, which had at one point seemed a certification of his outsider, rock-and-roll cool, now threatened to destroy him. His skin took on the look of bleached vellum, his weight dropped below ninety pounds, and he was becoming increasingly reclusive. He had entered the end stage of the game. It’s the same old story, and one that I had witnessed more than once.
But he had people who loved him and who didn’t want to see him check out early. His mother, especially, was worried. Somehow, she had heard that I had helped John Frusciante, so she called me.
“Layne’s in terrible shape,” she said. “I heard that you and John are doing okay these days. Could you please talk to Layne? Maybe you could get John to talk to him too?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
How could I refuse a request like that? I was aware of how bad Layne had gotten. The press loved to write about his fall. Layne was at the top of those “death pool” lists morbid people loved to put together. I gave John a call. If anyone could relate to Layne’s condition, it was Frusciante.
“Hey, man. How’s it going? You doing all right?” I said.
“Yeah. I’m good. What’s up?”
“I got a call from Layne Staley’s mother. She’s really worried about him. She says he’s in terrible shape. Worse than you were, maybe. She asked me if we’d go talk to him. What do you think?”
“Talk to him about drugs?” he asked.
“Yeah. Drugs. Of course drugs.”