"Celebrity Rehab 2": Exhausted, Dr. Drew Stays Up Late (and Says "Sorry" to Tom Cruise)

By Elaine Liner Archives
Cover image for  article: "Celebrity Rehab 2": Exhausted, Dr. Drew Stays Up Late (and Says "Sorry" to Tom Cruise)

 
"I'm in a bad way tonight, just so you know," said Dr. Drew Pinsky on Wednesday night's "Loveline," the late-night call-in radio show the doctor has co-hosted since 1983.
 
Broadcasting for the next few weeks from a trailer behind his Pasadena addiction treatment facility, Pinsky returned to "Loveline" after a few nights off as "Celebrity Rehab 2" went into production at the site. Once again, Pinsky is treating a group of substance-addicted "stars." The group this time includes a model, a rock drummer, two actors, an actress, a former American Idol finalist and Rodney King (what category is he in? Riot-sparker? Police beating survivor?).
 
After three days in front of the cameras, Pinsky sounded exhausted as he took to the radio airwaves again. Throughout Wednesday's "Loveline," the doctor ducked in and out of the studio to deal with his new rehabbers. "It's been difficult," he said on the air.
 
Thursday morning brought a slew of news items and bloggerama about Pinsky's upcoming interview in the August Playboy. In it he comments on Tom Cruise's odd behavior in recent years and draws inferences from Cruise's own admissions of childhood neglect and abuse. But it's Pinsky's phraseology about Scientology being a "cultish kind of environment" that drew immediate rebukes from Cruise's lawyer, Bert Fields, who compared Pinsky to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and called him an "unqualified television performer."

And Dr. Drew thinks detoxing celebs are hard to deal with? Try ticking off the Scientologists! 
 
Pinsky sounded aghast at the Nazi comparison during his Thursday afternoon radio talk show, "Dr. Drew Live." He said the quotes were taken from a "leak" of his "sitdown, free-association" interview with Playboy. "I don't know Tom Cruise. I don't know that much about Scientology. I've had Scientologists on this show," he said. But "people feel empty when they join and cult," which often comes after childhood abuse and abandonment.
 

Pinsky said he didn't "particularly like being slandered [by Fields]. "I had no intent to harm Scientologists. I'm pretty neutral about it actually." He also offered an apology. Cruise and Fields' response was "an over-reaction to something that wasn’t really meant to be about [Cruise]. I do sincerely apologize if Tom Cruise or anyone in his family was harmed. I meant no harm."

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