Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew is back for a fifth season, and we’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk about the show with Dr. Drew and some of the other staff at the Pasadena Recovery Center to get an inside look at the rehabilitation process. This week, we spoke with Jenn Gimenez and Dr. John Sharp about the energy of the cast on graduation day, and they also address critics of the show now that season five has come to a close.

First up, Dr. Sharp.

Is writing a goodbye letter like the ones the group read aloud a typical thing that most patients do to complete their rehab process?
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Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew is back for a fifth season, and we’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk about the show with Dr. Drew and some of the other staff at the Pasadena Recovery Center to get an inside look at the rehabilitation process. This week, we spoke with Jenn Gimenez and Dr. John Sharp about Sean Young and Jessica Kiper‘s re-entry into the real world, and the tragic death of Mike Starr.

This week we learned a lot about Sean Young’s backstory and how she and her husband both have drinking problems.

Sean’s situation is a really good example of a complex family system. In other words, we could see that as Sean was at home more, that her drinking increased, and part of that was that she was probably around and increasingly dissatisfied with where her career had brought her. The more free time she had, the easier it was for her to kind of drink a glass of wine when preparing dinner, and continue drinking throughout the night with no regrets that she drank too much, so she was looking at this and she was trying to decide how much of this she had to own up to, and how much of this was a addictive problem, she was really trying to come to terms with that.

But the interesting point is that rather than focus on that, she was looking at the same set of issues as they played out with her husband, and how they played out with him. Was he drinking too much, did one beer become four, or what would happen as the night went on? So we did want to help her by bringing him in to address this, but we didn’t want to only focus on him, because we understood that this was also an expression of her own kind of questions regarding herself.

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Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew is back for a fifth season, and we’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk about the show with Dr. Drew and some of the other staff at the Pasadena Recovery Center to get an inside look at the rehabilitation process. This week, we spoke with Jenn Gimenez and Dr. John Sharp about Friends and Family Day at the center.

First we spoke with Dr. John Sharp, the Pasadena Recovery Center’s psychiatrist, about Amy Fisher and Michael Lohan‘s dramatic family visits.

In this episode, it’s family day at the center and it seems very overly focused on Amy and Michael in particular. I’m just curious if you thought this show was going to latch on to them and their issues and run with them as much as it has?

Dr. Sharp: The clinical work that was done in connection with the family visits was very earnestly focused on what we could do with who was available. For example, Bai Ling‘s mother only became available after the original filming, so she wasn’t able to be there at family day…We were just as concerned with Bai’s needs to reconnect with her mother as we were with needing to talk through whether Amy Fisher’s husband was going to be supportive with the changes she was going to make in her life. It just turned out because of who was available, who showed up and how people behaved that the production of the episode featured these dramatic moments, but I don’t think that the treatment emphasized those people more than anyone else’s legitimate need to get attention to their family issues.

What was your ultimate take on the relationship with Amy and her husband?

They’re very close and he is very supportive of her well being, and Dr. Drew and I wanted to asses that and get a feel for what their relationship is like. Her husband obviously is a very imposing man and we worried from a distance that he may have strong feelings about what she should and shouldn’t do and that may not have aligned with what we would see in her best interest. It turns out he was very supportive of her. We really got the sense that he wanted her to do whatever she needed to do to get healthy, specifically when she was talking about giving up making adult movies. He was not at all resistant to that, he actually said that he was relieved. That’s a good example of how important it is to bring a significant other in, in regards to a personal change that is going to affect their family.

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