Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic

I'd never heard of Dr. Drew Pinsky before I bought this book. Now I know a lot about him - the book is a paean to his thoughts on his own brilliance as a doctor, broadcaster, father, athlete, inspirational speaker, resister-of-sexy-patients and everything else that illustrates he has ascended to the absolute pinnacle of achievement in 21st century America.

Its seems these days that every celebrity has to have a stint or three in rehab for street cred (its so stressful being a multi-millionaire star with a huge entourage to look after one's every need including scoring drugs) and I was interested to see exactly what rehab involved. This was not the book that was going to enlighten me. Dr. Pinsky was involved only on the medical rather show more than psychological or behavioural side. That is, he prescribed medicines to ease his patients' physical progress through the rigours of going cold turkey. This is less than fascinating and his patients aren't celebs to provoke a satisfying smirk of schadenfreude, just boring, strung-out, generally self-absorbed individuals. Dr. Pinsky says that all these individuals suffered childhood abuse which led directly, in those physically susceptible to it, to almost-unavoidable drug or alcohol addiction. Oh, childhood abuse again. Right.

The rest of the book is taken up with relating stories from his other medical practice, his five-nights-a-week radio show, public speaking, and strange almost non-relationship with his wife, mother of his triplet children (Little League and ballet recitals duly attended) who leads an almost totally-separate life from her husband. Still, perhaps not strange, what with all those money- and fame-making activities and writing the book there probably wasn't much time left over and anyway, who'd want a close relationship with such an excessively self-involved person?

I don't very often give a book just one star, and if I hadn't disliked the author quite so much, I might have given it two. But to be fair, there is a culture clash here. Bragging of one's own achievements is a perfectly valid and even praiseworthy activity in the US but considered absolutely contemptible in the UK and I was raised in Britain. So read the book, listen to the radio show, catch him on his reality tv show and judge for yourselves.

This isn't an edit, just a few extra sentences that I wanted to add in the light of having seen both his tv show Celebrity Rehab and some gossip thing he does after the Nancy Grace rants. The Celeb Rehab has confirmed my belief that the z-lister celebs can't stand being the same nobodies that we all are and will do anything to get back in the public eye. Including showing themselves off at their very worst. Especially if they are being paid large sums for it. But it also showed Dr. Pinksy as a much more caring and involved doctor than his book led me to believe. He's also very personable. Unfortunately the tv show after Nancy Grace rather puts my opinion of him back again! show less

I really enjoyed this book. A very candid look at addiction and recovery from the doctor's point of view, with lots of firsthand accounts of people tring to put their lives back together.

Liked the insite of treatments & candidates for addiction

Excellent.