Detox for the soul
Famous? Done something you regret? Not sure how to salvage your reputation? Just check into rehab, says Zoe Williams
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian
Jade Goody has gone into rehab, admitted for "depression and stress". "Jade has struggled since leaving the [Big Brother] house a week ago and learning that she has become the most hated figure in Britain," a friend told the Sun. I wish I had a friend who formed such succinct sentences. It makes you realise how much your own friends blether on. Here's the sequence of events, as I understand it: Jade calls Shilpa Shetty "Shilpa Poppadom" and "Shilpa Fuckawallah" and tells her she should spend time in "the slums"; she exits house; defends own reputation; realises she's on a sticky wicket; "collapses" with stress; is "told by GP that he was going to refer her to the Priory", but seems to have entered said institution under her own steam; is "now being monitored by doctors, while they decide what treatment to give her".This is a funny old business, isn't it? The stress-induced collapse is always so fishy. It's such an unusual response, when most people, under stress, just absent-mindedly eat ginger biscuits. In cases of rehab for addiction, where a person has got themselves into a fix from which they must, for their own wellbeing, be rescued and rehabilitated, doctors pretty much know what to do. "A heroin addict, you say? Let's monitor her while we decide whether or not to take away her heroin . . . Oh, depressive? You watch her pacing up and down, I'll just go and Google Prozac, see if that might work."
I hate to call anyone a fraud. It seems such a petty accusation, set against existing tabloid charges of "racist", "bully" and "fat". Celebrity stress is not exactly the most serious of medical conditions. It doesn't even sound that medical. You might just as well refer yourself to a creche.
I do not, however, think this is self-indulgence on Jade's part. Rehab, in this instance, is being used as a one-stop redemption shop. It's a neat mea culpa previously used by Mel Gibson, after his antisemitic outburst last August, when he asked a police officer if he was a "fucking Jew" and shouted "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world". Mel, of course, wasn't the first star ever to enter rehab - indeed, going into rehab on the advice of a doctor, or a judge, with handcuffs on is as old as the Hollywood hills - but Gibson illustrates neatly the more modern variant of self-referral. It is a way of atoning that you can do really very fast, and of course, it's not that much of a hardship either. You were never medically referred, so when you get there, doctors don't know what to do with you except watch you. And a lot of these people are actors. They are used to being watched. Mel said, after his curious explosion, "I am not a bigot; hatred of any kind goes against my faith." But naturally, this was not sufficient - words have never been quite vast enough to convey atonement, which is why in the olden days they used to make up Songs of Atonement.
It seems to be particularly in misdemeanours of bigotry that only residential self-flagellation will do - to complete the prejudice triptych, along with Jade's racism and Mel's antisemitism, Isaiah Washington, star of Grey's Anatomy, rehabbed himself for his anti-gay remarks (he called one of his fellow actors a "faggot".) He said, "I regard this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again."
The only thing that comes close to (actually, thinking about it, probably surpasses) bigotry for hot social shame is sexual harassment, for which Mark Foley institutionalised himself last year. The Republican congressman, who sent sexually inappropriate emails and messages to teenage boys, explained: "I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioural problems." It's rather American, isn't it, blaming alcohol for the fact that he couldn't stop badgering his staff for sex? In England, one might be tempted to respond, "Matey, we all like a drink, but I certainly don't employ 16-year-olds and then spend the day sexy-mailing them, even when I've had an absolute skinful."
So where did this come from, this self- disciplining (in the most literal sense)? I've seen the seeds of it in children; a friend of mine's kid will do a running commentary on his own naughtiness, finishing off with suggestions for an appropriate punishment, so that when he has really pushed it, and upset everyone, and ruined everybody's day, he'll shout, "Now I've been really bad! Oh, lock me in the car!" I don't, however, think Mel Gibson got the idea from my friend's naughty kid; on the contrary, it comes from the judicial system, in which - far more frequently in America, it must be said - stars are exempted from custodial sentencing by agreeing to a spell in Betty Ford.
There's a distinctly different tang to that kind of offence, though: Winona Ryder did rehab instead of prison for her shoplifting. She would never have had to redeem herself with us, her public, for such an offence, since a) nobody really minds a shoplifter - it feels like a nice, of-the-people crime, and b) she had already redeemed herself with her lovely Marc Jacobs court outfits.
Andy Dick (you know Andy Dick! You will find him in the not-very-famous-but-makes-lists-of-famous-people-with-addiction-problems-look-longer section of the library), Charlie Sheen, Nicole Richie . . . oh, there are tons of them. They were mainly addicted to painkillers. What this really rams home to me is how much better American painkillers are than ours.
The question remains: how much of an atonement is it when you admit yourself and you're not even really addicted to anything? What happens when you get to the Priory? Do they still go through your luggage and make you go to the group therapy, or are you allowed to just sit about looking glum? Doesn't that drive the proper addicts crazy? Is it like AA - do you still have to go round all your family and friends when you get out, apologising for the time you arrived at their wedding/ bar mitzvah [not that] drunk, [really not at all] whacked out on drugs, [no more] unreliable and flaky [than the next man]? And if it is rehab lite, must one go residential? Couldn't Jade have said sorry with a detox? Couldn't she just have given up wheat, then put out a press release? "I may be guilty of racism, but I've eschewed doughnuts in penitence and, by the by, beaten my bloat!" ·
I hate to call anyone a fraud. It seems such a petty accusation, set against existing tabloid charges of "racist", "bully" and "fat". Celebrity stress is not exactly the most serious of medical conditions. It doesn't even sound that medical. You might just as well refer yourself to a creche.
I do not, however, think this is self-indulgence on Jade's part. Rehab, in this instance, is being used as a one-stop redemption shop. It's a neat mea culpa previously used by Mel Gibson, after his antisemitic outburst last August, when he asked a police officer if he was a "fucking Jew" and shouted "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world". Mel, of course, wasn't the first star ever to enter rehab - indeed, going into rehab on the advice of a doctor, or a judge, with handcuffs on is as old as the Hollywood hills - but Gibson illustrates neatly the more modern variant of self-referral. It is a way of atoning that you can do really very fast, and of course, it's not that much of a hardship either. You were never medically referred, so when you get there, doctors don't know what to do with you except watch you. And a lot of these people are actors. They are used to being watched. Mel said, after his curious explosion, "I am not a bigot; hatred of any kind goes against my faith." But naturally, this was not sufficient - words have never been quite vast enough to convey atonement, which is why in the olden days they used to make up Songs of Atonement.
It seems to be particularly in misdemeanours of bigotry that only residential self-flagellation will do - to complete the prejudice triptych, along with Jade's racism and Mel's antisemitism, Isaiah Washington, star of Grey's Anatomy, rehabbed himself for his anti-gay remarks (he called one of his fellow actors a "faggot".) He said, "I regard this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again."
The only thing that comes close to (actually, thinking about it, probably surpasses) bigotry for hot social shame is sexual harassment, for which Mark Foley institutionalised himself last year. The Republican congressman, who sent sexually inappropriate emails and messages to teenage boys, explained: "I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioural problems." It's rather American, isn't it, blaming alcohol for the fact that he couldn't stop badgering his staff for sex? In England, one might be tempted to respond, "Matey, we all like a drink, but I certainly don't employ 16-year-olds and then spend the day sexy-mailing them, even when I've had an absolute skinful."
So where did this come from, this self- disciplining (in the most literal sense)? I've seen the seeds of it in children; a friend of mine's kid will do a running commentary on his own naughtiness, finishing off with suggestions for an appropriate punishment, so that when he has really pushed it, and upset everyone, and ruined everybody's day, he'll shout, "Now I've been really bad! Oh, lock me in the car!" I don't, however, think Mel Gibson got the idea from my friend's naughty kid; on the contrary, it comes from the judicial system, in which - far more frequently in America, it must be said - stars are exempted from custodial sentencing by agreeing to a spell in Betty Ford.
There's a distinctly different tang to that kind of offence, though: Winona Ryder did rehab instead of prison for her shoplifting. She would never have had to redeem herself with us, her public, for such an offence, since a) nobody really minds a shoplifter - it feels like a nice, of-the-people crime, and b) she had already redeemed herself with her lovely Marc Jacobs court outfits.
Andy Dick (you know Andy Dick! You will find him in the not-very-famous-but-makes-lists-of-famous-people-with-addiction-problems-look-longer section of the library), Charlie Sheen, Nicole Richie . . . oh, there are tons of them. They were mainly addicted to painkillers. What this really rams home to me is how much better American painkillers are than ours.
The question remains: how much of an atonement is it when you admit yourself and you're not even really addicted to anything? What happens when you get to the Priory? Do they still go through your luggage and make you go to the group therapy, or are you allowed to just sit about looking glum? Doesn't that drive the proper addicts crazy? Is it like AA - do you still have to go round all your family and friends when you get out, apologising for the time you arrived at their wedding/ bar mitzvah [not that] drunk, [really not at all] whacked out on drugs, [no more] unreliable and flaky [than the next man]? And if it is rehab lite, must one go residential? Couldn't Jade have said sorry with a detox? Couldn't she just have given up wheat, then put out a press release? "I may be guilty of racism, but I've eschewed doughnuts in penitence and, by the by, beaten my bloat!" ·