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FOREWORD

People are often curious about why I choose to work with addicts. They seem genuinely surprised by my answer. Instead of saying what they might expect (albeit true) that “I do it out of compassion for these suffering souls,” I usually express a point of view that catches them off guard.

The truth is, I work with addicts because they are some of the most powerful, richest, most human people you could ever meet. And I don’t mean that addicts are necessarily powerful in business or government or rich in terms of material wealth. Most are not. They are rich where it counts most—in character, talent, and life experiences. And perhaps they even excel in relation to something that is more difficult to characterize. Let’s just call it spirit.

Addicts may do bad things while addicted and feel awful about it afterward. They can test anyone’s patience to the max. But once they are solidly in recovery from their addictions, they become incredible survivors and truly wise, because what has happened to them is rather profound.

Though I can give you countless examples of these almost miraculous transformations, let’s focus on just one. When I first met Bob Forrest in the late 1980s, he was an international rock star and a horrific heroin addict. He was hardcore. He measured his life by album releases and the deaths of friends, mostly from substance abuse.

Bob was so out of control, so manic and abusive, that some people would actually hide when he showed up. He appeared with me on a radio show in 1988 and was being his usual crazy, abusive self when we got a call-in from a woman who had a very serious question. I don’t remember the question or her problem, but I recall that Bob suddenly became very focused and gave her some really reasonable advice over the radio airwaves.

“Bob, you’ve got something special in you,” I told him while we were still on the air. “You might make a great therapist one day if you’d just stop being such a freaking drug addict.”

As the years went by, our paths crossed occasionally and I was shocked by his appearance. He was so gaunt it looked like he had AIDS or tuberculosis, and I thought to myself, Oh, man, this guy is going to die soon. There seemed to be no way he would survive his addiction.

Fast-forward ten years. I’m giving a lecture for a musician’s assistance program somewhere in L.A. and I see this familiar-looking guy sitting in the front row. He asks me several provocative, good questions and I keep trying to place him in my mind: Is that Bob Forrest? The man I had given up for dead?

Throughout that presentation I just kept thinking, This couldn’t possibly be Bob Forrest because he is most certainly dead. I felt like I was looking at a ghost.

It turned out that Bob had become this amazing, talented, and flourishing recovery guy. He had been in twenty-four different rehab facilities and finally found sobriety in 1996, when most people in his life had given up on him ever surviving.

As you can probably guess, I recruited Bob to work at the psychiatric hospital where I was the medical director. He had a magnificent talent for reaching addicts, and I had the pleasure of watching him develop into a consummate professional. It was actually his frustration with how addicts and their treatments were being portrayed in the press that motivated us to agree to participate in a new reality program that came to be known as Celebrity Rehab. If you’ve seen it, Bob is the cool, smart guy often wearing glasses and a smile, with a fedora parked atop his mop of red hair.

This is the kind of remarkable thing I see all of the time: Someone who seems to be a goner reappears, having come back—way back—from the brink of insanity and death to create a highly productive and contented life for themself. These are not just random success stories. Those who are in long-term recovery are like missionaries returned from an archetypal journey of suffering and loss, self-discovery and redemption.

I still learn something new every day about the disease of addiction. For example, a friend of mine who was eight years sober admitted to me one time that, despite his life having blossomed in recovery, “I haven’t found anything I love as much as drugs and alcohol.” That got me thinking about the insidious power of this disease and how, to give up something you love more than anything, you must be deeply motivated beyond belief. How many so-called normal people could face this sort of dilemma and summon the inspiration to wrestle for the rest of their lives with such a powerful demon until it goes into hiding and stays there?

Now you have a glimpse at why addicts intrigue me so much and why I have spent so much time trying to understand the biology of addiction. Addicts are remarkable human beings, and we all have a lot to learn from them.

Take a look at many great poets, artists, and even some of our most famous leaders. Often they are drug and alcohol addicts. Many fighter pilots, extreme athletes, race car drivers, and others who test the limits of endurance are addicts. They are at their best in extremely intense situations.

Why is that? What makes them better survivors? How can many of them continue to function despite parts of their brains being usurped by this disease of addiction? What life skills must they master and from what emotional well must they draw to finally break free? These are some of the questions you will find answers to in these pages.

When Christopher Kennedy Lawford first told me he was researching and writing a book about the “gifts” of addiction and what lessons society can learn from addicts, I knew this was something I would want to read.

In What Addicts Know, Chris takes a fascinating look at a completely overlooked subject. It is an important, life-changing book, one that deserves to be widely read and long remembered.

—DR. DREW PINSKY