A TV review: Dr. Phil’s Primetime Special: Escaping Addiction
And, a Review of “A Dr. Phil Primetime Special: Escaping Addiction”
While Dr. Phil understands addiction, even he can misinform. This program is an excellent example of good information intertwined with bad.
The program, originally shown on CBS Friday May 20, featured an on-air intervention with the head nurse of an alcohol/drug rehab center, Joannie. A full-blown pharmaceutical drug addict, Joannie not only admits to her addiction, but also cops to manipulating, lying, cheating, stealing and even driving with her kids in the car while very much under the influence of narcotics. The most serious flaw in the show may have been the failure to explain that such admissions and self-diagnoses are exceedingly unusual in the early stages of the disease and that we need not wait for such admissions before intervening.
Dr. Phil correctly pointed out that Joannie’s husband, Brian, who was by her side during the entire intervention, was an enabler who was helping to kill her. However, Dr. Phil incorrectly said that Brian was “in denial.”Physicians, who Brian thinks should “know what they’re doing,”prescribed pharmaceutical drugs for Joannie. He lives with her and her moods, which are smoothed out when using those drugs and erratic when not. Brian has every reason to trust the judgment of the doctors, who have gone through many years of medical training. How can he be “in denial”- which suggests a willful attempt to not admit to something – when addiction has never been explained and not even the MDs understand her condition? Brian, like most spouses of addicts, is simply unaware and confused.
While Joannie admits she needs help, she makes all sorts of excuses to not go to rehab. When she cries, “I can’t leave the kids,”Dr. Phil correctly points out that she hasn’t been there for the kids for years. She goes into treatment kicking, screaming and out of control, as addicts usually do, where staff personnel describe her as resistant, arrogant, defiant and doing everything possible to wield power and control over others. Most poignant, she is described as having a gigantic ego and a “rules don’t apply to me”attitude, with the emotional state of a 15-year-old. She stays only because she realizes that “what I’ve been doing hasn’t worked, so I’ll try something new.”All of this was excellent information.
At the end of the show Dr. Phil says, “We’re going to fight for this woman’s life.”While he didn’t ignore the effect on others, he failed to stress that she was endangering and destroying their lives long before hers was in peril. No mention was made of the fact that she was putting not only her children in harm’s way, but also the early-recovering addicts she counseled and nursed. Nor was there any discussion of the fact that no one seems to have noticed that the fox was in the hen house and that this is, unfortunately, all-too-common: not even her peers seem to have diagnosed her disease (I relate a number of similar stories in Drunks, Drugs & Debits). It was a good program, but one for which comments such as these would have markedly improved the educational content.