Country singer Mindy McCready’s life caught up with her career
earlier this week. “I’m saddened to hear of her passing, but I’m
not surprised,” former fiancé Dean Cain told People. “All
her troubles were self-inflicted.” This includes her final trouble,
which leaves two boys motherless.
If Superman couldn’t put McCready back together, why did Dr.
Drew assume that he could?
McCready becomes the fifth patient of Dr. Drew’s Celebrity
Rehab to transcend addiction through bodily transcendence.
Unwitting riot catalyst Rodney King, Alice in Chains’ bassist Mike
Starr, Taxi and Grease actor Jeff Conaway, and
Real World resident Joey Kovar all passed shortly after
Dr. Drew treated them. The smiling doc may not look like the grim
reaper. But many of his patients behave as though they have seen
him.
Death wasn’t the addiction cure they sought. But like so many
before them, death was the addiction cure they got.
Physicians do wonders with broken legs. Their success rate on
broken hearts ranks somewhere below Mario Mendoza’s success with
curveballs. Rehab-style treatment works for doctors. Patients? Not
so much. Rehab can serve as a chemical respite. But with addiction
it’s the patient rather than the doctor who holds the cure. Doctors
can perform many miracles. Living our lives for us isn’t one of
them.
Dr. Drew, like Mindy McCready’s friends and loved ones, wielded
little power over her decisions. She attempted suicide numerous
times, went Murphy Brown with two children, starred in the
obligatory celebrity pornographic video, lost custody of her
offspring, and got arrested for OxyContin possession. Her earlier
bad decisions made her final bad decision for her.
Rehab, which rarely succeeds away from the cameras, seems a
riskier proposition in front of them. Surely McCready’s CV of
stupidity made her a not-ready-for-primetime player. Perversely, in
the perverse world we inhabit, that made her a suitable candidate
for a starring role on the small screen, which strives to earn that
diminutive description. Her downfall was our entertainment. Who’s
sick?
Never trust a doctor who follows an initialized professional
credential with a first name. It’s manipulation, as Dr. Ruth and
Dr. Laura understood before Dr. Drew did. Like blue jeans and a
tie, or a dress and sneakers, the title prefacing the first name
sends a mixed message. It announces detached authority while
inviting warm familiarity. Even a medical aficionado as esteemed as
Dr. Demento subscribes to formal conventions regarding title and
surname (as well as in dress).
We first met Dr. Drew as a Loveline cohost giving
advice to call-in teenagers about love and lust. He shifted to
chemical dependency of another sort on Celebrity Rehab,
where he encountered McCready and other basket cases trying to
right their lives on television, and then shifted back to his
initial broadcast passion through Sex Rehab. He similarly
counsels and consoles the schoolgirl mothers on MTV’s Teen
Mom. Like many seedy adults, Dr. Drew hangs around with
teenage girls, narcotics users, and sex perverts all too much.
What Dr. Drew does is creepy. How he acts isn’t. He seems
knowledgeable, caring, and, on occasion, willing to issue tough
love. A few of his patients — Mackenzie Phillips and Tom Sizemore
come to mind — emerged from his care better than they entered it.
Dr. Drew’s real talent is in how he makes his viewers rather than
his patients feel. His success in relieving us of the need for a
post-program shower may stem from his success as a performer. Dr.
Drew, television talk show host, veteran voice of advice radio,
friend to teen moms, reality-television star, and physician to
addicts of all sorts, also acts in scripted shows and movies.
Ultimately, he understands his patients because he shares their
primary addiction. Dr. Drew, as much Mindy McCready or Jeff Conaway
once did, joneses for the limelight. As demonstrated by his
patients’ Sunset Blvd. moments — broadcast to the world
on VH1 rather than suffered privately in a darkened room —
celebrity is a hard drug to kick.
