Weaving in the fast lane

As fired HBO Chief Executive Chris Albrecht became the freshest punch line in the late-night recovery jokes, the entertainment industry once again came to grips with its strange and often denial-steeped relationship with addiction.

Albrecht is just one of a host of celebrities entering rehab after an alcohol- or drug-fueled scandal in the last year (others included Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson and Britney Spears). He’s also the latest experiencing recovery slippage; Gibson and Robin Williams recently sought help after what they said were years of sober living.

“I was just saying it feels like the ‘80s again,” said Richard Rogg, head of Promises, the high-end Malibu recovery center where Spears lately sought treatment. “Everyone’s going into rehab.”

Still, surprise is the default reaction of industry watchers when a celebrity goes haywire, no matter how scarlet those red flags have been. Last year, when Lohan admitted in a Vanity Fair interview she had used drugs, the ensuing media storm defied logic. A young, wildly successful, suddenly skeletal actress is doing drugs? Friends and fans alike were shocked, shocked to learn of such a thing. (On Saturday, the notoriously troubled Lohan was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.)

According to many in recovery and the entertainment industry (some could call this the ultimate dual addiction), things are as they ever were. People get drunk, some get sober. Some of these stay sober forever, some do not. Addiction, they say, is not a rash to be cleared up with a dose of antibiotics or a stay at the Betty Ford Center. It is a disease that must be treated daily.

“I don’t see a big change in the rooms of AA,” says one writer-director who, not surprisingly, prefers anonymity. “It’s more that the culture has changed. There is just more attention paid to everything celebrities do, including get sober.”

Albrecht actually took many of his colleagues by surprise -- after his arrest in Las Vegas on May 6, staff members of HBO huddled in one another’s offices in silent and baffled mourning as if someone had died.

Much of the shock stems from allegations of violence against women. Albrecht admitted to the “unlawful grabbing” of his girlfriend in the Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel parking lot. The Times also reported that HBO paid off another alleged assault victim 16 years ago.

But Albrecht is also management, and although the public is accustomed to stars and other “artistic” types boozing and drugging themselves nearly to death, the idea of a CEO with a “secret” drinking problem -- his claimed 13 years in Alcoholics Anonymous seem to have been actually anonymous -- is a little more disturbing.

Not that everyone is buying it. When Albrecht announced he had agreed to leave HBO so he could re-devote himself to AA, public reaction was the same as it was to the news that he had hired crisis manager Allan Mayer -- Albrecht was working the steps all right. The steps of industry damage control, of which entering rehab and hiring Mayer or someone like him are Nos. 1 and 2.

Such reactions highlight once again how tenuously Hollywood, and America in general, believes that addiction is a chronic disease. For those not in recovery, rehab is often seen as a hideout, a way to avoid taking responsibility.

When Spears took her shaven pate into Promises, the media went wild with tantalizing rumors of her guzzling soda and housing an entire entourage. Commentary was so scalding that normally acid-tongued late-night TV host Craig Ferguson was moved to out himself on his show as a recovering alcoholic and to call for a cease-fire on those hapless celebrities seeking serenity. The YouTube recording of that moment quickly made the rounds.

Hollywood has long had a reputation for high consumption and high tolerance for booze and dope. From tough guys Spencer Tracy and John Huston to tragic figures like Judy Garland, many actors have struggled with addiction issues.

But these days it can feel as if a celebrity is busted every 10 minutes, even those who successfully “took the cure” years ago. Have half a century of AA and at least 20 years of addiction as a topic of polite conversation had no effect at all? (Coincidentally, Albrecht’s arrest happened mere weeks after HBO aired an exhaustive, much-touted nine-segment multimedia documentary called “Addiction.”)

Promise’s Rogg, himself a recovering addict, doesn’t think addiction is more or less prevalent than it has been in the past. But, he says, the consequences have become graver -- driving laws have been tightened, media scrutiny has intensified and, as Albrecht just discovered, tolerance for such behavior has waned.

“Anyone with a lot of money and power can surround themselves with people who will condone whatever,” Rogg says. “When you’re an addict or alcoholic, you live in a bubble anyhow; with money and power, you can take it to a different level.”

Eventually, however, the bubble is popped -- by the press, by law enforcement or by the extreme behavior addiction produces. Humility, Rogg says, is a big part of the recovery process, but admitting one is simply a worker among workers, as AA’s “Big Book” advises, is not something you’ll hear over a power lunch at the Ivy.

As the head of security and bodyguard firm Galahad Protective Services, Dennis Bridwell spends a lot of time dealing with the rich, famous and powerful, and he says many of the people he’s protecting are as unbalanced as the people he’s protecting them from.

“People who want to be a star tend to have a lot of personality disorders,” he says. “The personality disorders are not diagnosed until they party too much, and then they go into rehab because their publicist told them to.”

Bridwell will not reveal clients past or present, but insiders say he has worked with a variety of celebrities. Bridwell blames the people who surround the star for not only condoning bad behavior but also exacerbating it.

“These people, the 5 and 10 percenters,” he says, “they want the star to perform no matter what, because that’s the meal ticket.”

He has told parents, spouses and friends when he thought a client needed treatment, only to be met with resistance, he says.

“You have people who are not necessarily comfortable in public being told they have to perform by their handlers,” he says. “Then you get the paranoia, histrionics and narcissism.”

Planting people in rehab, Bridwell says, doesn’t help because they don’t belong in rehab; they belong in a psychiatrist’s office.

“They are not necessarily comfortable in public, but they have to be out in public,” he says. “It’s not surprising many self-medicate.”

Statistics suggest that 10% of Americans struggle with addictive behavior, and if it seems as if they’ve all recently relocated to L.A., that’s just not so. The people who have to pony up if an actor goes berserk during a movie shoot say that things are no worse, or better, than they were 30 years ago.

Joe Finnegan and Wendy Diaz work for Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co., which provides insurance policies for many films and has medical files on pretty much every star going back for 50 years. What they know could keep them in website-hits heaven for the rest of their lives. And they agree that media scrutiny is at an all-time high, which often makes their job of assessing a person’s risk a little easier.

“The tabloids you take with a grain of salt,” says Diaz, director of entertainment underwriting. “But then again, you’d be surprised what they get right.”

To be part of an insured production, everyone must take a physical, and most are honest about their habits.

“They have to be,” says Fireman’s Vice President Finnegan. “They know it’s completely confidential, and they know that if they lie, they will be liable for the money lost if they delay production.

“The addiction itself is not the problem,” he adds. “It’s the not showing up to work that’s the problem.”

Some of the most notorious addicts, he says, also show up on time every day; it’s the ones people don’t hear about who cause the biggest problems.

And that is true of any industry, says one actor who has been in the business and in recovery for more than 20 years. But the powerful and famous are often cut a lot of slack for years because they are also successful. Sources close to Albrecht, for example, say they knew he had been drinking again, but when the man’s the boss, what are you supposed to do?

“It’s a long money train,” says the actor, who wished to remain anonymous. “So if someone intervenes or mentions that the emperor has no clothes, that someone likely will get kicked off the train.”

Instead, many wait for the train to derail. Which, as Albrecht has discovered, it usually does.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com