Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, The Complete First Season Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been an alcohol and drug counselor assisting adults and adolescents for years into entering recovery. So I was very excited to hear that "rehab" had gone mainstream with the idea and creation of this series. I will describe the basics that happen in each episode without giving plot spoilers, and tell you my overall opinion of the series and the DVD set at the end.
Disc 1

Intake is the first episode of the series. We meet the cast of celebrity rehab, which includes Brigette Nielson, Jessica Sierra, Daniel Baldwin, Jaimee Foxworth, Chyna, Seth Binger, Mary Carey, and Jeff Conaway.
Detox is the second episode, and is primarily about this process of detoxifiying from alcohol and drugs.
New Arrival is the third episode, and adds Ricky Rodriquez to the bunch. Issues with rebelliousness and how that relates to recovery are discussed in the episode.
Disc 2

Sex and Trauma, episode 4, is discussed as a reason for using drugs and alcohol abusively. One celebrity leaves rehab.
Episode 5 is "Bye Bye Baldwin." One celebrity is confronted about the use of anabolic steroids outside of treatment, another clebrity's signifigant other brings alcohol into the unit during family visitation. Sober activities are introduced and focused on.
Episode 6 is entitled "Friends and Family," and emphasizes the need of family members to attend counseling with the addicted clients. Addiction as a family disease is discussed, and how someone who does not have family involvement is likely to relapse.
Disc 3
Episode 7 is entitled "Retreat" and focuses on clean and sober recreation. Rebelliousness and inappropriate behavior is discussed and observed on the program.
Episode 8 is Graduation. It is observed that some clients are in "relapse mode," and seem to be reverting to old behaviors, and devaluing treatment because in actuality they don't want to leave treatment. A choice is given to the clients-each person can stay in sober living for up to three months, all expenses paid, and they must give their answer to this at the graduation ceremony.
Disc 4
Episode 9 "Graduation II" Everyone says their goodbyes, and various celebrities decide upon or decline to stay in the sober living environment.
Episode 10
Boy, how I wish I could give a review of this complete episode. A reunion is held of the Celebrity Rehab clients, after a complete profile of what happened to Mary Carey the DVD cut off and went back to the menu page during the segment of what happened to Ricky Rodriguez. Very disappointing. So I have no idea what happened to the majority of people who completed celebrity rehab or who stayed sober.
Overall, the content of this DVD was exactly what you would see at a non-celebrity rehab center. The group counseling segments and the recreation segments are done in normal inpatient treatment centers. The celebrity clients acted as regular addicted clients do of other inpatient treatment centers, with their sexual acting out, and immature behavior. Addiction and Alcoholism is not immune to one's class status or wealth.
However, I am puzzled by few mentions of the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups. Both of these groups have helped millions of people to recover from addiction. Yet they are only mentioned in passing during graduation in the "Graduation II" episode. I feel a brief introduction on the importance of these groups, having a sponsor, and working the 12 steps would have been beneficial in one of the episodes of this program.
Also, the DVD set was poorly put together. "Intake" is the first episode, and is listed as the first episode on the back of the DVD. Yet, it is number three, the last episode, on the DVD. The last episode of the series, "Reunion," only plays for 14 minutes before it cuts off and goes back to the menu. I returned one set of DVDS thinking that this problem with the last episode was an isolated incident, however, that is not the case. The new one I just got from Amazon.com has the same flaw, and another reviewer mentioned the fact that he could not get this episode to play either.
Also, I would have liked the outtakes and deleted scenes available on this disc as well.


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Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew is the first television series to chronicle the dramatic, unscripted real life experiences of a group of actual celebrities as they make the life-changing decision to enter themselves into a drug, alcohol and addiction treatment program with the sincere desire to achieve true rehabilitation and recovery. This disc set includes the full first season.
This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.\r\n
This disc is expected to play back in DVD Video "play only" devices, and may not play in other DVD devices, including recorders and PC drives. \r\n

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Winter's Bone (2010) Review

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(More customer reviews)As crack cocaine is to inner cities and alcohol is to Indian reservations, so methamphetamine is devastating rural white communities across the United States. WINTER'S BONE, set in the remote Ozark Mountains, hauntingly depicts this plague. The story focuses on 17-year-old Ree Dolly, whose father has disappeared after putting up the family home as bail collateral. Unless she can find him, Ree and her younger brother and sister will be without a roof over their heads.
Ree's father is a "cooker" and her mother has been driven into a catatonic state. Ree is on her own in the hostile, clannish, and male-dominated community where she stumbles from trailer to trailer in her frantic search. Crank's ravages are everywhere, in the gaunt and grim faces, the harsh and sudden violence, the cruelty and hopelessness. Her father's only brother, Teardrop (flawlessly played by John Hawkes), holds a spoonful of the white powder out to her and asks, "Gotten the taste for it yet?" "Not yet," she recoils.
Aside from the down-home soundtrack, Winter's Bone is not easy to watch. Its gritty realism never lets up. The characters look like they climbed from Dorothea Lange's Depression and Dust Bowl images, only with a touch of meth-induced paranoia added to the hunger and despair. The dialogue is sparse, and not once in 100 minutes do we hear laughter or feel much hope for Ree's future. What makes it all bearable is the strength and determination of Ree, movingly played by 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence.
Winter's Bone is winning awards and earning rave reviews. The acclaim is well deserved. To achieve authenticity, director and co-writer Debra Granik and her team spent two years immersing themselves in the local community. Ree's younger sister is even played by a child who lives in the main house in which the movie is set. The film's power makes me want to see Granik's 2005 debut film, "Down to the Bone," another award winner focused on drug addiction and featuring a strong female lead.

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17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) sets out to track down her father, who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails, Ree and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth. Based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone is the winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize.

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