ReHab for the Rest of Us

What’s the difference between ‘Rehab’ and prison?
About a million dollars?
I’m asking.
I seriously want to know.
Seriously!
Well, maybe I have my personal reasons for inquiring.
Not that I am anticipating a stay at the institution of my choice, anytime soon, but the news of late has piqued my curiosity.
I am curious where – for example, we draw the line: what kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors can be offset by a stint at rehab?
Can you, for example, run someone over with your lawnmower and simply check into a lawn care rehab clinic?
If you are admitted to rehab quickly enough, is every shooting accidental?
Certainly drunk driving is on the list of rehab-able offenses.
It seems if you add the prefix ‘drunk’ to a wide variety of crimes or offenses, the rehabs welcome you with open arms, and law enforcement hesitates.
Drunk Driving? Come on down!
Drunk Racism? Wilkommen.
Drunk Lewdness? Naughty, naughty!
Drunk Writing? Well, with my luck that’s probably where they draw the line. We just can’t tolerate misplaced modifiers, can we?
It seems that the rehabs are available to anyone, whatever their faux pas, as long as they arrive with checkbook in hand.
Or, that they have made previous arrangements: there are probably insurance policies that the moderately well-to-do can purchase and which provide the policy owner with a limousine, a press release, and an experienced specialist to represent you on the tube.
How else can you explain all these quick getaways?
Whatever they have done, give them credit for having a plan in place.
One moment the star is stumbling about, cursing at the police while the cameras roll, and the next (alakazam, alakazee) they have disappeared - like Alice, down a velvet lined rabbit hole.
I imagine the rehab world is like the little island in the classic television show, “The Prisoner”: everybody in their own little numbered bungalow, with plenty to read, brass bands playing in the gazebo, the trees full of paparazzi-shaped fruit.
With such a world waiting, it is not surprising that those who can afford it seem to visit so often.
And it’s a fact that, for many in the entertainment industry, a well-publicized weekend stay at a clinic actually increases their chances of getting a plum part, or at least getting their picture in TV Guide.
They call it human interest, but it’s really something a bit tawdrier.
Aw, who am I fooling: I’m more than curious about the lifestyles of the rich and rehabbed, I’m jealous.
I‘m pouting because I don’t think it’s fair that the rich and famous (or the well insured) can have such an easy time of it when they screw up.
I’m not saying that the rich should pay a bigger price for their indiscretions, but rather, that there should be some kind of rehab for the rest of us.
Let me hear it:
Rehab for the rest of us!
Rehab for the rest of us!
Rehab for the rest of us!
I won’t ever need rehab for driving my Lamborghini through the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel, but there have been many times when I could have used a combination elaborate excuse and weekend getaway for lesser crimes.
When I forgot to pay the bus fee for my eight year old – for example, and someone had to drive him to school for a week or so.
Would it have been too much to ask that, when my wife wanted to confront me with that ‘brain cramp’, I was suddenly unavailable for comment and, rumor has it, holed up in a single room at the Radisson?
Who among us regular folk hasn’t forgotten to take Old Ironsides to the auto repair shop before the inspection sticker expired?
But do you think just once – instead of getting pulled over in the neighborhood by a local cop with his lights flashing, I could instead disappear from the scene and one of the hosts of The Good, Bad and the Uugly could, moments later, read a statement on live cable access television saying I had been admitted to the Barney Fife Rehabilitation Center?
While the rich and famous have well-dressed spokespeople who offer second-hand confessions about addictions to painkillers, alcoholism, or former membership in the Klu Klux Klan, my spokesperson would reveal a “long-time habit of falling asleep in front of the TV”.
“15 years ago”, my spokesperson would continue, “Mr. Mand was treated for a failure to properly balance his checkbook, resulting in the electricity being shut off. Last Saturday morning he suffered a relapse and has been admitted to his cousin’s until his wife chills out”.
When it comes right down to it, rehab is just one heck of a great excuse.
It’s a stomach ache before the big test.
The one thing that Mel Gibson and I have in common is that neither of us ever wants to admit to screwing up.
What is so damned special about admitting a mistake, anyway?
Does it change things? No.
Does it make us better people?
Maybe the Pilgrims had the right idea.
Spend a weekend with your head and arms in the ‘stocks’ downtown, and you were good to go.
But that’s not going to happen, at least not to Mel or MAF53, or Congressman Kennedy.
No, those guys are going to rehab – the kind with the bungalows and the breakfast buffet, and complementary terrycloth robes. But for the average schmo, like you and me, I am afraid that the best we can hope for is to see our names in the Police Log, spend a night on the couch, and put up with smirks on the faces of our friends and neighbors.
Life is just not fair.