Addiction Blog

James Taylor addressed drug offenders as “my fellow addicts” in the Pinellas courtroom in Clearwater, Florida today. The five-time Grammy winner told the large crowd of rehab graduates that they have a friend as he spoke of his own heroin addiction and subsequent 30-year abstinence.

The program was started 10 year ago and has seen 3,000 people graduate rather than serve jail time. Taylor praised the drug court and Circuit Court Judge Dee Anna Farnell who manages the program. Taylor has had such hits as “You’ve Got a Friend,” “Fire and Rain” and “Something in the Way She Moves.”

One of Taylor’s methods to maintain sobriety is intense physical workouts. The first drug court graduate in the procession was one of Taylor’s backup singers Valerie Carter.

While James Taylor has come clean about his substance abuse problems with heroin it seems that legendary folk singer Bob Dylan has been outted as at one time having kicked a $25 per day heroin habit in the 1960’s. Whether you’ve gone public or not many heroin heroes help others in overcoming addiction and maintaining sobriety and you don’t have to be famous to be a heroin hero to someone.

Well, Sheryl Crowe may say some guy was her “favorite mistake” but when it comes to Dennis Quaid and cocaine he says it was his “biggest mistake.”

In a recent interview, Quaid told Newsweek, “My greatest mistake was being addicted to cocaine. I started after I left college and came to Los Angeles in 1974. It was very casual at first. That’s what people were doing when they were at parties. Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised. It was petty cash, you know? It was supplied, basically, on movie sets because everyone was doing it. People would make deals. Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line.”

Quaid said that when he was doing the move The Big Easy in the 1980’s he was a regular user and his life was out of control. He said he was in a band called the Eclectics and was in Los Angeles doing a show and afterwards the band broke up and he had a revelation about the need to get into rehab and away from the blow. And he did.

In the 1990’s however his movie career failed even though he was clean. In 2002, after more than 10 years of sobriety, Quaid made the movie The Rookie in which he regained some of his previous credibility with the critics. Quaid is only one of many famous addicts to seek treatment in rehab and come out the other side. Now, if we can just give Charlie Sheen a shove in the right direction …

It may have well have been an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie saying “I’ll be back.” Instead of the California governor however is it actress Lindsay Lohan who is spending her 5th stint in rehab within the past 3 years.

Lohan is now out on $300,000 bail and in going back into drug and alcohol rehab until October 22, 2010. The Mean Girl actress violated her probation when she failed a drug test. This follows her ankle bracelet turning up positive for alcohol use earlier this summer.

Of course famous actresses and actors going to court and rehab is nothing new. Britney Spears has faded from the spotlight of the media for the time being and Lohan has picked up that mantle.

In fact it is so common for celebrities to go to rehab, there is a TV show based on this phenomenon called “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.” It is also so common that last night on the George Lopez show, the comedian said (paraphrasing here) that there are more stars on his show than there are in Malibu rehab.

Hopefully, the revolving door of rehab will soon come to an end for Lohan.