slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
Around dusk on Feb. 17, Dr. Drew Pinsky was sitting at the computer in his hillside home in Pasadena, Calif., when he received an e-mail from a friend with some troubling news. Mindy McCready, a 37-year-old country singer and a star of the third season of “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” a television show that made its debut on VH1 in 2008, had shot herself at her house in Heber Springs, Ark.
“She lost her battle,” Dr. Pinsky, 54, recalled the friend writing. “I sent back, ‘Did she die?’ ”
“Yes,” the friend replied.
Ms. McCready was the fifth participant of “Celebrity Rehab” to die within two years and the third from Season 3, which ended in March 2010. When he got the e-mail, Dr. Pinsky said recently, “I don’t remember doing anything. It is not my job to do anything.”
The singer was no longer a patient, but a few weeks earlier they had talked and he had urged her to seek help in the aftermath of the January death of her boyfriend, a music producer named David Wilson. Ms. McCready had, but Dr. Pinsky said she left the psychiatric hospital prematurely.
“I felt defeated,” he said. “The air went out of my body. I was confident that Mindy was going to take care of herself.”
It didn’t take long for the backlash to begin, particularly among those who have long claimed that Dr. Pinsky exploited celebrities too sick to withstand the scrutiny of a reality television show. In the week after Ms. McCready’s death, he appeared on “Extra” and “Access Hollywood” and was interviewed on “The View.”
“I didn’t want to seem avoidant,” he said.
When Sherri Shepherd of “The View” asked him if the public nature of Ms. McCready’s treatment had something to do with her death, Dr. Pinsky replied: “In a weird way I wish I could claim more responsibility for this. The reality is, though, I haven’t seen Mindy, say, in years.”
He said he was still shaken when he appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show” on March 5 to discuss the insidious and often fatal nature of addiction.
“If we were doing a show called, ‘Cancer House,’ and people died, you’d go, ‘Well, at least you got them a few good years,’ ” Dr. Pinsky told a sympathetic Dr. Mehmet Oz, adding, “Addiction is not a curable condition.”
Though Dr. Pinsky seems genuinely saddened by the deaths of Ms. McCready and the show’s other participants, those setbacks have done nothing to slow his frenetic workload. He acknowledged that being a media personality has now become his primary career, after years treating patients with addiction issues. Still, he said he had no plans to return to “Celebrity Rehab,” although recently he has reconsidered.
He can be found five nights a week co-hosting the sex-advice radio show “Loveline,” which started his media career nearly 30 years ago when he was a medical resident. He is the host of “Dr. Drew on Call,” an hourlong talk show on the HLN news channel, as well as a frequent commentator on CNN and a reality-show guest host. (He recently moderated the “Mob Wives” reunion special.)
He and the comedian Adam Carolla (his most famous “Loveline” co-host), 49, take their act on tour, performing in clubs and theaters. And he continues to see patients Wednesday mornings at his office in Pasadena.
But what continues to baffle Dr. Pinsky, and what resurfaced when Ms. McCready died, is that people hold him accountable long after his on-air doctoring is done.
“They think I’m a millionaire and they think I am, like, rampaging or exploiting people to maintain that,” he said. “And that could not be farther from the truth.”
He recalled a recent show in Redondo Beach, Calif., when an audience member grilled him about a pornographic tape made by Farrah Abraham, one of the stars of MTV’s “Teen Mom,” a show on which he was a guest host.
“Somebody went, ‘How about your teen mom Farrah and her porn tape?’ ” Dr. Pinsky said. “I went, ‘My teen mom Farrah?’ I’ve spent maybe three hours with her, probably 45 minutes across three different shows I hosted. I know her. I’m available to her. I care what happens to that young lady. But I don’t produce that show. I’m not her doctor.”
However fleeting the contact, he said he can’t escape a negative association.
“She becomes my problem because of the choices she is making,” Dr. Pinsky said. “I haven’t seen her in two or three years, but I am a failure if she makes bad choices in her life. It’s like, wow.”
It was lunchtime in Los Angeles on April 16 and Dr. Pinsky was already well into a 15-hour workday. Having finished two podcasts with Mr. Carolla, he drove through midday traffic to prepare for his 6 p.m. HLN show. Later, he said he dined with Mark Geragos, a lawyer who has represented Winona Ryder and Michael Jackson, then drove to Culver City, where “Loveline” was recorded live at 10 p.m.
Freeway snarls are familiar to Dr. Pinsky; he grew up in Pasadena. His father, Morton Pinsky, was a physician, and his mother, Helene Stanton, a Las Vegas stage singer.
“I’m a workaholic,” Dr. Pinsky said as he plopped down on a tangerine couch at Mr. Carolla’s studio. He said he began to have panic attacks at 19 and was told he had an anxiety disorder while a student at Amherst College.
“I was a mess,” he said. “But I found my way through.”
He graduated in 1980 and attended medical school at the University of Southern California. Then he began hosting the “Loveline” radio show, which he did as a lark, but it taught him that the media could help educate young people about protected sex.
“I thought: ‘Oh, my God. I have to be next to these guys because they attract ears,’ ” he said.
He later opened his own medical practice and was named a medical director for the chemical dependency program at the Aurora Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. He said he left Aurora in 2010 after his celebrity attracted unwanted media scrutiny to the hospital after a series of unrelated patient incidents.
Dr. Pinsky described himself as a codependent personality with a perfectionist streak. And he does exhibit people-pleasing tendencies. When Mr. Carolla was ready to record, Dr. Pinsky snapped to attention.
“He gets mad at me,” Dr. Pinsky said with a sheepish grin as he scurried away. The two have a relationship that is sometimes uncomfortable to watch (Dr. Pinsky the empathetic listener compared to the more temperamental Mr. Carolla), but the shtick seems to work.
“I’m not into comedy as much as people think,” Mr. Carolla said. “And he’s not into changing people as much as people think.”
Mostly, they like to perform.
“Drew likes being in front of the crowd doing his thing,” Mr. Carolla said. “I don’t know whether he needs it or craves it. But he certainly finds himself in front of people on a regular basis.”
In late March, weeks after Ms. McCready’s death, the two were at the House of Blues in Las Vegas for a stop during their “Loveline” reunion tour. To the crowd chugging cups of Mr. Carolla’s “mangria,” the comic’s acerbic wit was the draw. And even Dr. Pinsky was subjected to Mr. Carolla’s barbs.
“You latch on to a fair to middling idea and then you hang on to it like a pit bull hanging onto a rope toy that has no value,” Mr. Carolla said to his co-host, taking a jab at Dr. Pinsky’s reality television credits, which include not only “Celebrity Rehab,” but spinoffs like “Celebrity Rehab Presents Sober House” and “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew.” “You’re a scholar. You are a man of science. Why? Why do you do this?”
Dr. Pinsky laughed and replied, “Wishful thinking.”
Later, Dr. Pinsky explained that “Celebrity Rehab” was his way of showing the public that addiction unchecked had serious consequences.
“If doctors are not allowing ourselves to participate in the entertainment aspects, we are not going to have any impact,” he said. “The medical practice is not getting better.”
Supporters say it is his benevolent nature that makes him relatable on screen.
“Although he has become a television personality, he has brought his actual personality to television,” said the actress Mackenzie Phillips, who starred in “Celebrity Rehab” with Ms. McCready.
Dr. Oz, the well-known cardiothoracic surgeon, said he gets nervous when people approach him and mention that he treated a friend or family member.
“I always ask, ‘Are they OK?’ ” he said. Unlike Dr. Pinsky, he said he has escaped criticism in his transition to television talk-show host largely because people view heart disease differently from alcohol or drug addiction, which is just as deadly.
“The failure is not seen as my failure, it is the failure of the disease,” he said. “But Drew is criticized.”
cont at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/f...ician-and-media-star.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
“She lost her battle,” Dr. Pinsky, 54, recalled the friend writing. “I sent back, ‘Did she die?’ ”
“Yes,” the friend replied.
Ms. McCready was the fifth participant of “Celebrity Rehab” to die within two years and the third from Season 3, which ended in March 2010. When he got the e-mail, Dr. Pinsky said recently, “I don’t remember doing anything. It is not my job to do anything.”
The singer was no longer a patient, but a few weeks earlier they had talked and he had urged her to seek help in the aftermath of the January death of her boyfriend, a music producer named David Wilson. Ms. McCready had, but Dr. Pinsky said she left the psychiatric hospital prematurely.
“I felt defeated,” he said. “The air went out of my body. I was confident that Mindy was going to take care of herself.”
It didn’t take long for the backlash to begin, particularly among those who have long claimed that Dr. Pinsky exploited celebrities too sick to withstand the scrutiny of a reality television show. In the week after Ms. McCready’s death, he appeared on “Extra” and “Access Hollywood” and was interviewed on “The View.”
“I didn’t want to seem avoidant,” he said.
When Sherri Shepherd of “The View” asked him if the public nature of Ms. McCready’s treatment had something to do with her death, Dr. Pinsky replied: “In a weird way I wish I could claim more responsibility for this. The reality is, though, I haven’t seen Mindy, say, in years.”
He said he was still shaken when he appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show” on March 5 to discuss the insidious and often fatal nature of addiction.
“If we were doing a show called, ‘Cancer House,’ and people died, you’d go, ‘Well, at least you got them a few good years,’ ” Dr. Pinsky told a sympathetic Dr. Mehmet Oz, adding, “Addiction is not a curable condition.”
Though Dr. Pinsky seems genuinely saddened by the deaths of Ms. McCready and the show’s other participants, those setbacks have done nothing to slow his frenetic workload. He acknowledged that being a media personality has now become his primary career, after years treating patients with addiction issues. Still, he said he had no plans to return to “Celebrity Rehab,” although recently he has reconsidered.
He can be found five nights a week co-hosting the sex-advice radio show “Loveline,” which started his media career nearly 30 years ago when he was a medical resident. He is the host of “Dr. Drew on Call,” an hourlong talk show on the HLN news channel, as well as a frequent commentator on CNN and a reality-show guest host. (He recently moderated the “Mob Wives” reunion special.)
He and the comedian Adam Carolla (his most famous “Loveline” co-host), 49, take their act on tour, performing in clubs and theaters. And he continues to see patients Wednesday mornings at his office in Pasadena.
But what continues to baffle Dr. Pinsky, and what resurfaced when Ms. McCready died, is that people hold him accountable long after his on-air doctoring is done.
“They think I’m a millionaire and they think I am, like, rampaging or exploiting people to maintain that,” he said. “And that could not be farther from the truth.”
He recalled a recent show in Redondo Beach, Calif., when an audience member grilled him about a pornographic tape made by Farrah Abraham, one of the stars of MTV’s “Teen Mom,” a show on which he was a guest host.
“Somebody went, ‘How about your teen mom Farrah and her porn tape?’ ” Dr. Pinsky said. “I went, ‘My teen mom Farrah?’ I’ve spent maybe three hours with her, probably 45 minutes across three different shows I hosted. I know her. I’m available to her. I care what happens to that young lady. But I don’t produce that show. I’m not her doctor.”
However fleeting the contact, he said he can’t escape a negative association.
“She becomes my problem because of the choices she is making,” Dr. Pinsky said. “I haven’t seen her in two or three years, but I am a failure if she makes bad choices in her life. It’s like, wow.”
It was lunchtime in Los Angeles on April 16 and Dr. Pinsky was already well into a 15-hour workday. Having finished two podcasts with Mr. Carolla, he drove through midday traffic to prepare for his 6 p.m. HLN show. Later, he said he dined with Mark Geragos, a lawyer who has represented Winona Ryder and Michael Jackson, then drove to Culver City, where “Loveline” was recorded live at 10 p.m.
Freeway snarls are familiar to Dr. Pinsky; he grew up in Pasadena. His father, Morton Pinsky, was a physician, and his mother, Helene Stanton, a Las Vegas stage singer.
“I’m a workaholic,” Dr. Pinsky said as he plopped down on a tangerine couch at Mr. Carolla’s studio. He said he began to have panic attacks at 19 and was told he had an anxiety disorder while a student at Amherst College.
“I was a mess,” he said. “But I found my way through.”
He graduated in 1980 and attended medical school at the University of Southern California. Then he began hosting the “Loveline” radio show, which he did as a lark, but it taught him that the media could help educate young people about protected sex.
“I thought: ‘Oh, my God. I have to be next to these guys because they attract ears,’ ” he said.
He later opened his own medical practice and was named a medical director for the chemical dependency program at the Aurora Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. He said he left Aurora in 2010 after his celebrity attracted unwanted media scrutiny to the hospital after a series of unrelated patient incidents.
Dr. Pinsky described himself as a codependent personality with a perfectionist streak. And he does exhibit people-pleasing tendencies. When Mr. Carolla was ready to record, Dr. Pinsky snapped to attention.
“He gets mad at me,” Dr. Pinsky said with a sheepish grin as he scurried away. The two have a relationship that is sometimes uncomfortable to watch (Dr. Pinsky the empathetic listener compared to the more temperamental Mr. Carolla), but the shtick seems to work.
“I’m not into comedy as much as people think,” Mr. Carolla said. “And he’s not into changing people as much as people think.”
Mostly, they like to perform.
“Drew likes being in front of the crowd doing his thing,” Mr. Carolla said. “I don’t know whether he needs it or craves it. But he certainly finds himself in front of people on a regular basis.”
In late March, weeks after Ms. McCready’s death, the two were at the House of Blues in Las Vegas for a stop during their “Loveline” reunion tour. To the crowd chugging cups of Mr. Carolla’s “mangria,” the comic’s acerbic wit was the draw. And even Dr. Pinsky was subjected to Mr. Carolla’s barbs.
“You latch on to a fair to middling idea and then you hang on to it like a pit bull hanging onto a rope toy that has no value,” Mr. Carolla said to his co-host, taking a jab at Dr. Pinsky’s reality television credits, which include not only “Celebrity Rehab,” but spinoffs like “Celebrity Rehab Presents Sober House” and “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew.” “You’re a scholar. You are a man of science. Why? Why do you do this?”
Dr. Pinsky laughed and replied, “Wishful thinking.”
Later, Dr. Pinsky explained that “Celebrity Rehab” was his way of showing the public that addiction unchecked had serious consequences.
“If doctors are not allowing ourselves to participate in the entertainment aspects, we are not going to have any impact,” he said. “The medical practice is not getting better.”
Supporters say it is his benevolent nature that makes him relatable on screen.
“Although he has become a television personality, he has brought his actual personality to television,” said the actress Mackenzie Phillips, who starred in “Celebrity Rehab” with Ms. McCready.
Dr. Oz, the well-known cardiothoracic surgeon, said he gets nervous when people approach him and mention that he treated a friend or family member.
“I always ask, ‘Are they OK?’ ” he said. Unlike Dr. Pinsky, he said he has escaped criticism in his transition to television talk-show host largely because people view heart disease differently from alcohol or drug addiction, which is just as deadly.
“The failure is not seen as my failure, it is the failure of the disease,” he said. “But Drew is criticized.”
cont at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/f...ician-and-media-star.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
