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Experts Say - Celebrities Fall Lower and Hit Harder, Before Going to Rehab

posted 11:43 PM EST, Mon March 17, 2008
Experts Say - Celebrities Fall Lower and Hit Harder, Before Going to Rehab © Photo: Johnnyzam

They rise high and fall hard. Celebrities don't tend to face their addictions until things get bad.

That lifestyle of the rich and famous sometimes has a price, experts say; and when the price is an addiction to drugs or alcohol; celebrities tend to fall much harder before they concede to a need for treatment.

Susan Blank of the Caron group of rehabs explains it as, "A lot of times celebrities get away with a lot more, so they're often a lot further along in their disease before they ever get treatment and it's very difficult."

Surrounded by fawning "yes" people, often people relying on the celebrity for their own income, these stars don’t face the true consequences of their addictive behaviors until much later, and this makes recovery much harder. Addiction is a progressive disease, it always gets worse, and the earlier someone initiates treatment, the better the likelihood of success.

Most people need to face the consequences of their actions before accepting their addiction, their powerlessness over their addiction, and their need to get some professional help. When family and friends decide to stop enabling the behaviors of addiction, the addict is left to clean up their own mess, and forced to face the destruction of their addiction head on.

Celebrities just have more people available to clean up those drink or drug inspired messes; less people willing to tell them the cold hard truth. John Southworth, a professional interventionist, explains that it's all about the consequences, and that, "If we keep enabling them and don't allow them to feel the consequences then they will continue."

For most stars, it takes arrest or legal troubles to compel a period of treatment.

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