More reflections on Ms. Osbourne’s interview:
Kelly Osbourne says her first rehab stint was like ‘university on how to be a better drug addict’
About those so-called ‘body brokers’ — people who troll recovery meetings, to lure folks into relapse, thus feeding revenue to hungry treatment programs — it seems unlikely.
Not that I haven’t heard rumors to that effect over the years, but I’ve never been able to independently verify them. In general, it seems to me that an AA or NA meeting would be a very difficult place to scoop up recruits for a licensed treatment facility. How would the brokers identify candidates in the typical post-meeting crowd? Especially ones who happen to have the resources needed to pay for a month in a residential rehab? Sounds like an awful long shot.
On the other hand, there are verifiable accounts of ‘white vans’ cruising the streets of Native American communities on behalf of distant “sober homes”. I actually posted about that last year.
In another remark, Osbourne vividly describes her own first experience with drug use, following a tonsillectomy at 13. “They gave me a medicine that, for the first time in my life, made me feel like I was okay, like I belong, like it was something that gave me this great big warm hug… It was the answer to what I was looking for.”
I remember the late James Milam suggesting that someone’s ability to so clearly recall their first use of a substance might actually be an indicator of future problems. It’s certainly common enough in the personal stories of recovering people. That’d be a fascinating project for some researcher.
Next from the interview: Osbourne reveals that she never once, during her years of substance use, purchased drugs on the street. “All of my drug dealers were doctors. Every single time… At one point I was going to like six different doctors. And I had them in New York, and L.A., and London, so that when I ran out, I could call different ones to refill them for me.”
Now that I find easy to believe, given her age (39) and how closely it coincides with the salad days of overprescribing prescription painkillers. Something that still goes on, by the way — after all, the late Matthew Perry appears to have been supplied by private physicians with the drugs that killed him.
As far as I can tell, the driving force for these and other corrupt professionals was simply our old nemesis, greed.
I was disappointed to think that out of seven trips to rehab, this is what Kelly Osbourne had remembered. Not a lot of value, thats for sure. Still, I have a colleague who says of his own experience, “it was rehab that got me clean. I might have died without it. But it was Narcotics Anonymous that got me sober.”
It’s a familiar story.
