The rehab buzz

No one could have seen it coming. Despite her recent stint in rehab, during which she surely gained a considerable amount of wisdom about the evils of drugs, Lindsay Lohan was arrested last week on DUI charges.\nThe story may be another shallow celebrity gossip story the press is covering to cater to people’s interests in the lives they can’t have, but her lack of success in rehab shows the futility of a problematic trend among celebrities: entering rehab on the false pretense that making sour, drug-induced choices is the drug’s fault, not the user’s.\nTo name some of the more memorable celebrities who have recently done this: \nBritney Spears entered drug rehab earlier this spring after nearly a decade of progressively zanier stunts. Last fall, ex-Congressman Mark Foley entered rehab, claiming that his sexually explicit messages to congressional pages were the result of alcoholism. And Mel Gibson blamed the anti-Semitic remarks he made last year during his DUI arrest on the influence of alcohol, checking into rehab shortly thereafter. \nI can’t blame celebrities for wanting to save face when they get caught using drugs and alcohol. But while they’re using rehab to make themselves look like they’re taking control of their actions, they’re doing the opposite. They’re saying instead that drug and alcohol use are so hard to control that the most responsible decision a person can make when “substances” cause problems is to have rehab fix them.\nBut it’s not the substance that makes the bad decisions – it’s the user. Because the person ingests the substance, he is accountable for his actions under its influence.\nDrugs can be used responsibly, and most users are a testament to this fact. In the past month, 126 million Americans have drank alcohol, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health’s most recent data, and 19.6 million have used illicit drugs in the same time period. Of those, only 18.7 million drinkers and 6.8 million illicit drug users were classified as dependent or abusive.\nTrue, not all celebrities who enter drug rehab are playing publicity cards. Some do have substance problems that, despite their best efforts to control them, have taken such deep root that they can only be solved with professional help. And maybe drugs and alcohol did play a part in the mistakes of celebrities such as those above, but they don’t cause anti-Semitism, pederasty or chronic attention-whoring either. \nInstead of saving face by admitting they had made bad decisions and then using public efforts to demonstrate their reform, these celebrities continue the false rhetoric that drugs are an evil demon that lures in the innocent and strangles them. Better to acknowledge that demon’s foothold and have that savior “rehab” stop it, the rhetoric says, than to let drugs destroy your life. \nResponsible drug or alcohol use is possible. Decisions users make under the influence of substances to which they choose to submit are their own faults, and they should take responsibility for their actions.\nAs Lohan has reminded us, rehab doesn’t cure stupidity.