Celebrity Drug Addictions: Seeking Sobriety in the Spotlight
After a string of high-profile arrests, Downey seemed to be back on track, even winning a Golden Globe this year for his role on the TV show Ally McBeal.
His relapse is all too common among drug addicts trying to get clean.
"Every time they do it, it gets worse and it gets worse. How much worse does it have to get for Robert Downey, Jr.? I have no idea. Only Robert knows that, or Darryl Strawberry. Only Darryl knows that," says Jim Stillwell, director of the Los Angeles rehab center Impact.
Baseball slugger Darryl Strawberry blew a comeback chance earlier this year when he left a court-ordered rehab center and went on a cocaine binge.
"I'm an addict and I go out and I use drugs. I figure drugs may kill me," Strawberry has said.
To other addicts, Downey's and Strawberry's relapses are perfectly understandable.
"These guys don't have the choice anymore: It calls them, and they go no matter what," says Chuck Negron, former lead singer for the group Three Dog Night. Negron battled heroin addiction for two decades.
"[After] 90 million records I was homeless. The addict in me figured out how to do that--lose all that money," he says.
Sober for 10 years, Negron remembers what drove him to use drugs in the 1970s.
"I was basically a shy guy, and a shy guy in rock and roll is an awkward place to be," he says.
The key to sobriety, according to drug counselors, is understanding the disease.
"There's no real cure for drug addiction. There's a daily maintenance," says Stillwell. "It's like being a diabetic. There's no cure for diabetes, [but] you can live with it. You can change your lifestyle."
That's a difficult thing to do in the glare of the spotlight that comes with a celebrity's lifestyle.
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