Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Lindsay Lohan has reportedly entered a rehabilitation facility. It’s a step in the right direction, I suppose. I assume she’s there with the intention of dealing with her alcohol problems, and not, say, her Paris Hilton problems. You can’t get rehabilitated from Paris Hilton. Just like marijuana, there’s no physiological basis for her. She’s all in your mind, like The Matrix.

Lohan will be doing a stint at the aptly named Wonderland Center. I’m sure that this place is what many people visualize when they hear the words “drug rehab.” The truth of the matter, however, is that the vast majority of drug rehabilitation centers are just specialized hospital floors. The Wonderland Center, with its gated entrance, vistas of rolling green hills, and self-described world class meals, looks like a dream sequence by comparison. Wonderland is a glorified spa explicitly geared toward the Hollywood elite. Sure, they’d like you to stop shooting all that heroin, but if you need to get back on tour, they understand. I’d love to see how that chaperon system works in practice.

There are millions of people in the United States who have become dependent on a drug. I talked to many of them when I volunteered for these fine people. The story was almost always the same: poverty, lack of social support, and a desperate need to stop drinking, shooting up, or snorting something. Frustration is added to desperation, as there is almost always a waiting period of a few days between calling the rehab center and actually being admitted. Thanks to cutbacks by the Bush administration, there are now half as many rehab beds in the state of Massachusetts as there were in 2000. During the wait, the person in question must scramble to find someone to care for the children, convince the boss to give them a mysterious amount of time off, and otherwise attempt to rearrange their lives for the length of the stay. That stay, by the way, takes between three and seven days. That’s all. The turnover rate is very high, because the facilities are primarily concerned with getting the addicted person safely through withdrawal, and not much else. Counseling services are provided by overworked and underpaid case managers. For relapsed addicts, stints in rehab become about as routine as a colonoscopy.

Lindsay Lohan rolling up to Wonderland’s iron gates in an SUV looks almost comical in comparison. She’s a twenty year-old who drinks too much and makes bad decisions, something the world has never seen before. Because she’s famous, she gets to spend an indefinite amount of time in a ritzy day camp, complete with life coaches. All that space, all those resources, just for her. We should all be so lucky.