Jim Moorhead launched Renew in the right town. When his magazine starts to grow he’ll want to add writers and editors. And there’s no shortage in Chicago of first-rate, experienced journalists in recovery.

Not that a history of substance abuse is a requirement for working atRenew, but it helps in journalism to know the kind of life you’re writing about. “I am a high-functioning, high-low alcoholic,” Moorhead’s first editor, Kelly O’Rourke Johns, wrote in Renew two issues ago. (She’s since moved on. Her successor is also in recovery.) “It took me a long time to admit such a thing and certainly to admit it to a doctor.” A “high-low,”Renew informed me, is a drunk who has trouble recognizing that she’s hit bottom because it looks so much like a top. “Never subjected to DUIs or jail time or any real, harsh consequences,” Johns continued, “high-lows often take a long time to recognize they have a problem and have a tough time convincing others once they do.”

Written for addicts in recovery, Renew could be described as niche journalism except that “niche”profoundly understates the potential audience. According to studies I was shown by professor Deborah Hasin, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, there are some 23.5 million substance-dependent Americans who have stayed clean for the past year or longer. Moorhead tells me that according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, 20 million Americans are in recovery and another 23 million need help. What’s more, says Moorhead, “for every addict or alcoholic there are four other people affected by it.”

Who doesn’t have a drunk or substance abuser somewhere in his life? The market is all of us.

Alison True, the former editor of the Reader, knows Moorhead through the Near North Montessori School, where her husband teaches. Moorhead’s daughter is a student there. (Her teacher, incidentally, is my daughter.) True is familiar with Moorhead’s plans and she thinks Renew can succeed for the same reason the Reader did. “We used to say, ‘Who reads the Reader? Reader readers are people who read the Reader,’” True tells me, sharing an insight that might sound like a mindless tautology and is anything but. “He can’t capture the 20 million people in recovery. He can capture the people in recovery who want to identify as people in recovery.” In other words, Renew can create the audience waiting to be formed as soon as a magazine came along to form it.

And think of those hard-charging high-lows. The advertising Renew carries after a mere year of existence is largely for treatment centers. “It’s the low-hanging fruit,” says Moorhead. But Renew is a slick, oversize, coffee-table sort of magazine, and he covets the sort of high-end ads that celebrate desirable lifestyles. Right now he prints 20,000 copies of each issue, distribution is primarily through treatment centers, and he has about 5,000 subscribers. But he talks about 100,000. And he believes that when advertisers look twice they’ll recognize that these are consumers redefining their lives and willing to spend money to do it. “Entering recovery is no different than getting married, or having a first child,” says Moorhead. “It’s entering a new life stage. My experience is that when you turn your life around you start to reevaluate everything. You make decisions that support your new life, whether it’s exercising, or eating well—it goes on and on.”

Moorhead publishes Renew every two months and his goal is to make it a monthly. He wants his website,RenewEveryDay.com, to become the go-to site for anyone in recovery—the place to find a therapist or an AA meeting, or to organize a softball team, or to locate a restaurant that won’t seat you in the bar or drench your dessert in liqueur, or to turn to for help if you’ve got a teenager at home who’s in trouble.

As folks in recovery are wont to say, Moorhead’s solution to his problems growing up turned out to be a bigger problem. He was a shy and lonely teenager in Lake Forest, but the summer before his junior year of high school he went to a party, got drunk, and woke up the next morning “with this exhilarating feeling that it had been a great night even though I couldn’t remember much of it. Fast forward. I suddenly became very popular. I started dating the captain of the cheerleading squad.”

But when he went off to college he was an outsider again, and this time booze got him into fights and eventually kicked out of school. His father published some medical magazines and Moorhead joined him in the business. “We butted heads a lot,” he says. “We got along best when we were both drinking.” Along the way, he added cocaine to the mix.

Ten years ago his dad sold off the last of the magazines. Newly married, Moorhead needed a job but wasn’t looking for one. “My disease of alcohol addiction really took off,” he says. He tried an outpatient program at Northwestern Hospital. “That didn’t take.” He sampled a 12-step program. “I went back to my old ways.” Friends cornered him at a wedding and made him admit he needed help, but his visits to a series of treatment centers did him no lasting good. Then he heard about an “alternative treatment” in Arizona. “When I was there I didn’t talk about addiction—I talked about childhood trauma, something I never thought I had to address. I said, ‘Guys, I don’t think I belong here.’ But in the end it was really cool. I was able to draw connections, like lights going off in my head.”

Meanwhile, “being a publishing guy, I was always looking for magazine resources supporting people in recovery.” Titles would come and go, he says, but they all sent the wrong message: “I’m in recovery and this is all I deserve.” Moorhead imagined a magazine that flatly rejected the shame and stigma of recovery, and two years ago he decided to create it himself. After raising $700,000 from investors, he was in business.

Sitting there on your coffee table, Renew doesn’t shriek at you to never forget you’re one drink from oblivion. Rather, it proclaims you as someone saying yes to yourself and yes to life. On the cover of the September/October issue a radiant young blond woman in jeans kneels in a gold-spangled field. She’s at one with nature. On the cover of the November/December issue an elegant chatelaine stands by a table perfectly set. She’s at one with wealth and culture. The first is Tara Conner, the former Miss USA who, the cover tells us, “faced down addiction . . . to find her inner beauty.” The second is Brenda Wilhelmson, author of Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife, who “dishes about shame, friendships and why she outed herself.”

What is more familiar than the sight of a beautiful celebrity once stained by scandal now celebrating her triumphant quest “to find her inner beauty”? As for headlines that announce “Reinvent Yourself in 2012″ and “Conquering Self-Esteem”—Renew, meet Cosmo and O. I ask Moorhead if he has any trouble finding glamorous people in recovery who are willing to put themselves out there publicly. “For everyone who’s not interested, there are two or three who are,” he says.

And do celebrities ever approach Renew to let it be known they would not say no if asked to share the inspirational details of their personal struggle?

“We had a few like that,” Moorhead allows.

From LA?

“Exactly.”

When Hollywood notables dry out, word gets around. Reporters in recovery are known mostly to other reporters in recovery, and reporters who should be in recovery to their anguished friends. But in this business, alcoholism doesn’t so much go unseen as unconfronted. Perhaps out of a delusional loyalty to romanticized traditions, we tend not to judge or intervene.

But not being stoned and pilloried doesn’t save a drunk from destroying his life and career. Sometimes it just greases the skids. Renew treats the dark side of addiction with a light hand, but Moorhead says his readers understand what’s at stake. As he says about his own life in recovery, “If I lose this I lose everything. If it was to happen again I can only imagine what would happen next. Most significantly, I know I would die. I’d lose my wife. I’d lose my daughter. My job, my business, everything would fail.”

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 16, 2011 /NEWS.GNOM.ES/ — As one of the most buzzed about seasons of “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” draws to an end Dr Drew, Bob and Shelly have a lot of trepidation about the cast as they ready themselves to leave the safe confines of the rehab facility and reenter a world full of the temptations that brought them there.  The end of in-patient treatment is just the beginning of their long roads to continued sobriety.  Season five of “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” winds down asthe finale airs Sunday, August 21st at 9pm*.

If you’ve been wondering how all of the ‘celebrity rehabbers’ from past seasons have been doing with their sobriety, VH1 will air “Celebrity Rehab Revisited” – five, one-hour retrospectives of the series.  “Celebrity Rehab Revisited” will serve as “where are they now” specials with Dr. Drew and his head councilor Bob Forrest looking back on all five seasons of Celebrity Rehab.  These specials will include visits with former patients to see where they are now in their fight for sobriety.  We will see some patients achieving incredible success and living fulfilling lives, and others continuing their struggle to maintain sobriety outside the safety of rehab.

First up is “Celebrity Rehab with Dr Drew Season 5 Revisited,” a two-part special that will premiere on September 4 and 11 at 10pm*. Seasons 1-4 are set to premiere in the fall starting with season 1 on Wednesday, November 30th followed by seasons 2, 3, and 4.

• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Season 5 Revisited – September 4 & 11 at 10pm
• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Season 1 Revisited – November 30
• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Season 2 Revisited – December 7
• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Season 3 Revisited – December 14
• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Season 4 Revisited – December 21

Dr. Drew is the host of the nationally syndicated late night radio show Loveline as well as a respected practicing MD, board certified in internal and addiction medicine, who is staff at Huntington Hospital and assistant clinical professor of KECK USC School of Medicine.  Additionally, he is hosting a new primetime show on HLN called “Dr. Drew” and will also be hosting a daytime talk show “Dr. Drew’s Lifechangers” on the CW premiering September 19th.  He is the author of the New York Times best seller The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America (Harper Collins) and Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again (Harper-Collins.) Dr. Drew co-authored the first academic study on celebrities and narcissism that was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Elsevier) in September 2006, and is the first systematic, empirical scholarly study of celebrity personality.  Dr. Drew hosted VH1′s “Sober House” and “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” and can be seen on MTV’s “Teen Mom” and “16 & Pregnant.”

“Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” is produced by Irwin Entertainment.  Executive producing for Irwin Entertainment are John Irwin, Damian Sullivan, Joel Rodgers and Rob Buchta.  Dr. Drew Pinskyand Howard Lapides also serve as executive producers.  Jill Holmes, Noah Pollack and Jeff Olde are executive producers for VH1.

VH1 connects viewers to the music, artists and pop culture that matter to them most with TV series, specials, live events, exclusive online content and public affairs initiatives. VH1 is available in 99 million households in the U.S. VH1 also has an array of digital channels and services including VH1Classic, VH1 Soul, VH1 Mobile, and extensive video on VH1.com. Connect with VH1 at VH1.com.

*** For up-to-the-minute and archival press information including releases and photographs, visit VH1′s press-only Web site at www.vh1.com/press.

*All times ET/PT

SOURCE VH1

http://www.vh1.com/pres

Addiction generally is described by its behavioral symptoms — the highs, the cravings, and the things people will do to achieve one and avoid the other. The new definition doesn’t disagree with the standard guide for diagnosis based on those symptoms.

But two decades of neuroscience have uncovered how addiction hijacks different parts of the brain, to explain what prompts those behaviors and why they can be so hard to overcome. The society’s policy statement, published on its Web site, isn’t a new direction as much as part of an effort to translate those findings to primary care doctors and the general public.

“The behavioral problem is a result of brain dysfunction,” agrees Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

CLICK HERE to watch episode 6

Celebrity Rehab 5 Best Moments of Episode 6 Watch Video CLICK HERE

Now that the Casey Anthony case is over, HLN is seeking new news – some scandal to grip television viewers. Enter Amy Winehouse. Tonight at 9 pm on HLN, Dr. Drew, the addiction specialist’s weeknight show dealing with human behavior and driven by current events, will be devoted to the singer-songwriter’s premature death on July 23. He’s taking viewer’s questions so now all can weigh in.

Dr. Drew, also the host of Celebrity Rehab on VH1, has publicly commented on Twitter about Winehouse’s struggles with alcohol and drugs: “SO sad, another lost to addiction. A reminder that this is often a fatal condition. Recovery is possible, but sadly not for Amy Winehouse.” Dr. Drew knows about losing a client. Mike Starr, formerly of Alice in Chains, who appeared on a season of Celebrity Rehab and Sober House, died in March, apparently from a mixture of drugs.

Addiction is a wily condition. For those who don’t believe rehab works Dr. Drew offered insights on CNN with his reactions to Winehouse’s death. The doctor describes her fatal condition and the serious risk of returning to a career prematurely, and how both handlers and the public misunderstand the recovery process. The song “Rehab” reflects what he calls the addict’s “disturbance of thinking,” convinced they don’t need treatment. “Inevitably they relapse,” he explains. “This condition isn’t fixed in 30, 60 or even 90 days… there are no short cuts with opiate addiction. The prognosis is worse than the majority of cancers.”

Many have paid tribute to Winehouse, including Jaan Uhelszki in The Morton Report, tweeting their two cents and offering RIPs, from Moby’s horrified and helpless reaction toRussell Brand’s blog, thoughtful and reflective. Russell knows. He’s been there. Of course, this is all before there’s an official cause of death, but the autopsy led to an inquest with results to be revealed October 26. With Winehouse’s addiction problems so well-documented, this is a cautionary tale that makes Dr. Drew’s frequent admonition, “This disease can kill you” sound less heavy-handed.

The current fifth season of Celebrity Rehab has a curious cast featuring actress Sean Young (Blade Runner), baseball star Dwight Gooden, Michael Lohan (Lindsay’s dad), Amy “Long Island Lolita” Fisher, Steven Adler (Guns ‘N Roses), and a couple representatives of a new category, the reality show celeb. It’s clear how drugs and alcohol derailed careers and wrecked relationships. The process-oriented show and Dr. Drew’s familiarity with celebrity narcissism is intriguing to witness.

Nothing much triggers cool collected Dr. Drew. Though sufficiently detached, he asks the right questions, makes the apropos remark and nails it. Emotions fly wildly on the road to sobriety. But the good doctor attempts to make the process transparent and catches signals keenly—from an inward look to a bullying explosion—noting withdrawal symptoms, dissociation, trauma or another psychological dysfunction. The transformation of someone like actor Tom Sizemore from a sweaty mess to self-aware and on-the-mend shows recovery is possible, if not fragile.

Opinions will fly tonight on HLN at 9 pm, but, no doubt, Dr. Drew will field them with his characteristic aplomb. Tonight is for Amy.

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