The arrest last week of Robert Downey Jr in a bleak Los Angeles alleyway for suspected drug use, mere days away from his scheduled appearance before a Palm Springs judge for a parole-violating drugs transgression last November, has set off warning bells in the creative community. Kelsey Grammer of Frasier, Friends star Matthew Perry, Courtney Love, Melanie Griffith and Christian Slater have all benefited from rehab. Centres such as Malibu Promises and the Daniel Freeman Drug Rehab Clinic in Los Angeles and Hazelden in Minnesota are the immediate refuge for fallen stars. In Downey's case, even a 12-month stint in prison didn't work. For Downey, however, rehab was not the magic cure that many believe it to be.
Cocaine is a drug that's much more geared toward the creative process.
Downey's problems required him to be recast in this summer's romantic comedy America's Sweethearts, but often on movies there's simply a break in the action for a bit,' says Dade Hayes, who covers the film industry for Variety . In television, the workload is so much more demanding, so gruelling for months at a time, that drugs may be a way to cope, whereas on a film you lose a little bit of time, but it can be spaced out a bit,' says Hayes. Fifteen years ago, cocaine was romanticised. And yet they still don't know how to treat it. All the rehab centres are basically aimed at heroin users.