According to TMZ, who somehow gained exclusive access to Lindsay’s personal affairs once again, Lindsay’s jail time may not be just jail time: there’s evidently a program known as the “Impact Program” available to certain inmates in LA, which includes jail time and intensive substance abuse rehab. The program lasts five hours a day, seven days a week, and for ninety days. Looks like Lohan might actually serve her entire sentence — if they’re really serious about getting this girl clean, anyway. With Lindsay’s up-and-coming psych evals on the horizon, who knows — it might be deemed medically necessary for Lindsay to do the rehab stint, and wouldn’t that be great. I mean, I hope so. It’ll make her father happy, too, I’m sure, which is naturally what we’re all aiming for in this crazy place called planet Earth.
But really, holy fuck, man. Five hours a day. I can’t stand doing things I love for five hours a day. Christ.
If you are ordered to participate in this program, Lindsay, and you come out on the “other side” a mess? This time it’s on you, girl. All you. (Ahem, and it’s not as if it wasn’t the last time; clearly, everyone in Hollywood gets a free pass, so this might just be yours.)
I am watching the developments in the Lindsey Lohan affair with increasing frustration. It has an ugly witch hunt element to it, as if the teeming masses just want to grab the girl and carry her kicking and screaming to jail/rehab where she will be stripped of her protective inebriation and subjected to a force feeding of AA dogma. She’s done it before and it hasn’t worked. It doesn’t work because to tell someone–who has been using substances as a shield (new best friend) against their ever increasing demons–that they must stop all use and resort instead to a steady diet of 12 step extremism, is, to say the least, never gonna fly. And to smugly slap the label of addict on someone and then tell them that they can never so much as have one goddamn drink for the rest of their lives would be laughable if it weren’t so cruel, and even potentially dangerous.
I was in rehab four years ago for booze abuse where I had hours and hours of AA shoved down my throat and I left the place sober, true, with the benefit of clean time, which is definitely the way to go when you are at a point of no return in the addictive cycle. But I was also galled with resentment at the boot camp treatment. In addition, the AA assertion that you can never even take one drink or it will drag you back down the road to hell, i.e. you won’t be able to stop if you take so much as a sip of beer, is in fact a much more potentially lethal stipulation than most people realize. It left me drunk for a week after I left rehab until I realized that the place had rebooted my dormant Catholic upbringing, filled me with fear and brainwashed me into believing that I really couldn’t handle just one to a few drinks.
Full of righteous fury, I went back to my amazing shrink to really and truly, no bullshit this time, work on the problems that had caused me to self-abuse in the first place. You work on that and the Big Thirst becomes much less big. Today I love myself more and can drink moderately and even sometimes less than moderately but always with the ability to get back on track.
The only real approach that probably ever work on Lindsay, who I feel tremendous sympathy for, would be for her to find a therapist she really trusts who would suggest a gradual “lessening of abuse” approach through getting to the bottom of why she got that way. Nothing else is going to work for an independent thinker. AA, although it works for people who really want the structure and absolutism of a complete system, does not work for the free spirit and to force it on people who don’t want it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In my opinion.
cruel and unusual punishment? right. she needs help, but she also needs to not die. that’s kind of the problem, she’s never had to have any discipline or had any real rules. one of her charges is for a DUI and she’s in trouble for not doing what the court requires her to do. which means she’s not taking it seriously. you do know that when you drive drunk you can kill other people, that it’s incredibly irresponsible and sometimes fatal behavior? i’ve had a family member killed by a drunk driving free spirit. she didn’t do any time. i guess that’s what you get for being an such independent thinker. luckily, linds didn’t kill anyone, but she doesn’t seem willing to stop doing stupid shit like that.
what a bunch of entitled crap you just spouted. i hope that’s a joke, cause it sure sounds like one. tell that to the kids who really get hurt and never turn to drugs or drink and have to learn to deal with it, because they can’t afford shrinks, or the ones who die of starvation, or the ones who were born with HIV, or the ones who are simply beaten to death by their parents for dropping something on the floor. those people, they are so unfortunate that they are proles, not such godlike creatures such as yourself. sucks to be them!
yes, the rules don’t apply to you, you spirited genius. please take lindsay with you and start a new society where you can do whatever your heart desires and make other people pay the cost.
You have some very valid points there. Of course she has to follow the rules like everyone else. My real point, and I guess it wasn’t clear, is that AA does not work for everybody and can even be destructive. I don’t understand the level of compulsion that she and some other people seem to have with regards to substances. And maybe I never will. And maybe for some people, complete lifelong sobriety is the only answer. Many questions…