AM had a lot in common with Amy, the heroin addict he staged an intervention for on last night's episode. Both had drug-addicted fathers who died, and both turned to drugs to deal with that pain. Amy ended up getting sober and completing treatment. Immediately after watching the show, I wondered if Amy—or any of the other addicts who will be featured on future episodes—feel betrayed or let down by AM's death of an overdose just three days after filming for the series wrapped.

According to a recently filmed update with Amy, his death only makes her work harder to maintain her sobriety.

Before his apparent relapse, AM had been sober for 11 years, and his family has given consent to MTV to air the show, hoping that it will help others not meet the same fate as AM. In a statement, his family has said:

After careful consideration we have decided to air the show. Adam felt strongly that by doing this series he could help other addicts who were at a crisis point to get sober. Adam was fully aware that if it were not for his own sobriety he never would have achieved the level of success and happiness he had found. Helping people in their recovery was a huge part of Adam's life. It is our hope through airing this show that people will get to see the side of Adam that we knew and loved, not just the celebrity DJ, but the honest and caring person who gave so much of himself to help others.

Myerson's book is just one of two familial addiction memoirs reviewed in yesterday's Times. The other is a review of Kaylie Jones's memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me. Jones is the daughter of James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity, but her memoir focuses on her alcoholic, "histrionic" mother Gloria. Reviewer Janet Maslin says Jones "exposes her mother's cruelty, narcissism and heavy drinking, reeling off story after story about her mother's scorching wisecracks and bravura displays of malice." "Kaylie is at her fieriest," she continues, "in describing the step-by-step souring of her dealings with her mother and the ghastly decline of her mother's physical and mental health." A memoir that takes a mother's "ghastly decline" as it own aesthetic apex sounds potentially distasteful, but Maslin praises Jones's candor, saying, "she doesn't let propriety blunt her memories."

Gloria Jones is dead now, and can't be harmed by anything her daughter writes. But Jake Myerson, son of Julie Myerson and subject of her memoir The Lost Child, is very much alive — and only twenty years old. When Julie Myerson chose to write about her son's teenage marijuana addiction and her eventual decision to kick him out of the house, her British readership was outraged. The Times's Patricia Cohen says Myerson "was pilloried in her home country this spring as cruel, selfish and manipulative." Myerson elaborates: "a bit of a witch burning was what it felt like." Myerson feels that both memoir and drug addiction are less taboo in America, where she's releasing the book this week, and she hopes "Americans won't rush in and judge me."

But the harshest judgment may have come from the subject of the book, Myerson's son Jake. In a March interview with the Daily Mail, he vented his anger not only at the book but at his mother's anonymous column Living With Teenagers. Earlier in March, Myerson had confessed, "I wrote Living With Teenagers. I did so anonymously because I wanted to write truthfully, and that meant my children's identities had to be obscured." But, Jake says,

The thing is, it wasn't really anonymous; not to the people who knew us, those who matter. Having grown up with this, being written about in an arbitrary way since the age of two, I have always said to my parents 'Please don't do this, I hate this.' I was made to feel I was wrong for being offended by it.

He also accuses his mother of repeatedly denying she was the author of the column, even after his school friends worked it out and began to tease him. Of The Lost Child, he says,

What she has done has taken the very worst years of my life and cleverly blended it into a work of art, and that to me is obscene. I was only 17, I was a confused teenager, I was too young really to know who I was or what was happening.

He adds that before its publication, "she gave me a copy of the manuscript of The Lost Child and told me to read it. She wanted my approval; the problem is she would have published it regardless." Somewhat distastefully, Jake's comments to the Daily Mail caused Julie Myerson's publisher to rush the book out two months early in order to take advantage of the controversy.

Jake Myerson has lots more choice words for his mother, calling her a "pseudo New Labour socialist" who greatly exaggerated her son started action and "couldn't survive" without writing about her family. But Jake himself is very young and not exactly restrained — he talks about his siblings, one of whom is still a minor, and says his parents should have gotten a divorce — and it's hard to believe his side of the story is the unalloyed truth. The image he paints (with eager assists by the Daily Mail) of Julie Myerson as unrepentant fame-whore is probably oversimplified. That said, Myerson does sound like a piece of work. In her last Living With Teenagers column, she wrote,

There was no way I would or could continue writing with them knowing what I was doing. Over those two years, as our teenagers bloomed and matured and softened, and became so much more vulnerable, so the column began to feel less like some kind of benign, semi-comic revenge and more like a betrayal.

Getting back at your "ghastly" mom is one thing, but should you really be using your column to get "revenge" on your children, no matter how benign? And does "the importance of publicizing the nightmare of teenage drug use" — the justification Myerson and her husband use for publishing The Lost Child — really outweigh a young man's desire to keep his painful adolescence private? In the Times, Susan Cheever basically says: totally! Author of two addiction memoirs, one of which describes her assignations with two men while her daughter was sick, she explains, "I strongly believe everybody has the right to their own story." But everyone's story includes other people's, and artistic autonomy becomes a lot less admirable when those people are your children.

Cheever may be working out some of her own revenge, since her dad wrote "very, very thinly" veiled novels about their family. Perhaps she's so adamant about her right to her own story because, as a child, she was deprived of control over it. The same thing, it seems, has happened to Jake Myerson. Of his parents, he says, "They are writers, they are published, they have a voice. I don't." But the Daily Mail has been only too happy to give him a voice — unfortunately, his mother hasn't set a very good example of how to use it.

A Mother's Memoir, A Son's Anguish [NYT]
A Daughter's Memoir, A Mother's Anguish [NYT]
'You're The Addict, Mum!' Son Of Julie Myerson Says She's Hooked On Exploiting Her Own Children [Daily Mail]
Mum, What You Did Is Obscene: The Son Julie Myerson Kicked Out For Smoking Pot Tells His Side Of The Story [Daily Mail]

Joey's intervention took place almost entirely over text messages, because he ran out of the hotel conference room where his family had been waiting with Ken Seeley, and would only communicate with them via text while at his friend Pizza's house. Pizza is Joey's drug buddy. When I first saw his name in the subtitles, I imagined him as a white guy in his early 20s who's maybe into reggae and wears dirty hippie junkie knit hats that look like giant old hacky sacks, and probably earned his nickname during the gateway phase of his current downward spiral, because he'd always be the first one in the room to get the munchies and suggest calling Domino's.



But it turns out he's a portly, creepy, middle-aged man with an injured nose, who probably earned his nickname from working in a pizza parlor.



He ended up being a central figure in this episode.









Pizza swore that Joey was not hiding in his house.






So it's OK, because it all worked out in the end. Joey is trying to learn the true meaning of "serenity" in rehab, but judging from his recent artwork, it seems like he's not quite there yet.

• Star reporter Kate Major resigned today after announcing that she's dating Jon Gosselin, as she wouldn't want this conflict of interest to tarnish the mag's stellar reputation. Too bad Michael Lohan won't stop talking about his new BFFs.

• According to Lohan, who spoke with Radar Online and ABC News today, Major, who is best friends with his fiance Erin Muller, called him and said she and Jon needed a place to stay to get away from the paparazzi. Lohan says they've both been sleeping over his house. He wouldn't say whether they're sharing a room, but when asked about whether their relationship is romantic, he said: "Let me ask you a question: If she was using him why did she resign from the Star? I don't get involved in Jon's personal life but I'm not his manager or publicist. I'm just someone who's trying to help him out, like I've been trying to do with my daughter [Lindsay] her entire life." [ABC News, Radar Online]
• When Hailey Glassman, who reportedly said earlier this week that she was ready to be a stepmom to Jon's eight kids, heard that he and Kate Major were an item she said, "That's news to me." Later a teary Glassman added, "I still love Jon and Jon loves me." [People]
• The court in the Michael Jackson probate case has allowed the special administrators to make several book publishing agreements to reprint MJ's autobiography Moonwalk. The documents said it's best "for all book publishing agreements to be entered as soon as possible, as sales of the book and profits for the estate will be maximized the sooner the book is released due to the notoriety surrounding Michael Jackson's unexpected death and the resulting heightened demand for such products." [TMZ]
• Even though evidence of Michael Jackson's prescription drug use was found during the investigation into child molestation charges in 2003, prosecutors didn't bring it up in the case. "It wasn't a drug investigation," says a lawyer who didn't work on the case. "It was a lost opportunity for everyone to step in and say this not a healthy environment in every way." [People]
• Nas and Kelis have a new baby boy. Kelis gave birth to Knight Jones last night with her mother and sister by her side. It's unclear if Nas was at the hospital or not. [People]
• M.I.A. has posted a picture of her 5-month-old son in his own version of the outfit she wore to the Grammys while she was pregnant. Too cute! [Buzzfeed]
• So You Think You Can Dance judge/producer Nigel Lythgoe is hinting that if American Idol doesn't want Paula Abdul he'll hire her. [The Sun]
• Apparently Summer and Marissa aren't BFFs in real life. When the paparazzi asked Rachel Bilson if she's talked to Mischa Barton since her hospitalization, she replied: "I haven't spoken to her." [E!]
• Nick Lachey just can't stay out of it. Since his breakup with Vanessa Minnillo he's been partying and picking up various women. A source says on a recent evening, "He picked up five girls and they all snuck out the back door with him." [E!]
• Beyonce's sister Solange Knowles has shaved her head. TMZ is horrified, but we think she looks pretty cute. [TMZ]
• Chace Crawford says he didn't cut off his signature bangs intentionally. "I was over in London and someone cut it too short and I had to go to an event and I threw it back and it turned out to be some big deal." He said when he returned to the Gossip Girl set two weeks ago he, "showed up on set the first day and said, ‘Listen…can we do my hair this way for the first episode? Because it's a little short…' . And it kinda stuck. It was good to switch things up, though." [People]
• Nicholas Cage will switch on the Christmas light in Bath, England, where he owns two homes, this year. [The Telegraph]
• Jane's Addiction have canceled all of their upcoming Australian tour dates because drummer Stephen Perkins has an elbow infection. He's been hospitalized and is expected to make a full recovery. [Rolling Stone]
• Here's a list of some things People thinks you're supposed to know about the host of MTV's It's On With Alexa Chung: she's a contributing editor at British Vogue, she designs jewelry, and she's dating Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. [People]
• When asked about her musical influences Miley Cyrus said: "I love Coldplay and the Killers and John Lennon - all dudes, because I have a low voice. I do, I like that sound because it is a little more edgy." [Star-Telegram]
• "I want longevity. I still want to be working when I'm 70. So I'm eager to vary things. You get more interesting as you get older." — Anna Friel [The Telegraph]
• Eleanor Coppola, who shot the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse on the set of her husband Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now says, "I never intended to make the documentary of all documentaries. I was just trying to keep myself occupied with something to do because we were out there for so long. I just had never shot a documentary before. They wanted five minutes for a TV promotional or something and I thought sooner of later I could get five minutes of film and then it went on to 15 minutes. I just kept shooting but I had no idea ... the evolution of myself that I saw with my camera. So, it was a surprise for both of us and a life changing experience." [CNN]
• T.R. Knight says of leaving Grey's Anatomy, "From an outsider's perspective, I get the [impression that] 'He's just a spoiled actor…he doesn't know how good he has it.' There are a lot of people who would like to be in my position. But in the end, I need to be fulfilled in my work." [Entertainment Weekly]
• Tyler Perry says his greatest accomplishment has nothing to do with business. "My biggest success is getting over the things that have tried to destroy and take me out of this life. Those are my biggest successes. It has nothing to do with work." [CNN]
• Sarah Ball says of her Harry Potter character Lavender Brown, "I think that she's misunderstood, really. She's insecure, I think, and her main problem is that she's just obsessed with Ron. She loves him. She's almost borderline under a spell: she is just entranced by him, and that kind of causes her to become a bit wayward. She's not really aware of how she's coming across to everybody, as a bit mad. She realizes pretty quickly that he has feelings for somebody else-Hermione-and she kind of reacts to that by becoming incredibly clingy and possessive and loud and annoying. But I think she's just got a big heart and she just wants to be loved, you know?" [Newsweek]
• Jack White is launching a subscription service because he's unhappy with the way download in is affecting music experiences. "It's taken a lot of the romance out of the experiences of music. This is what we're trying to manipulate to the advantage of the fan/listener and the artist as well, to find ways to have beautiful experiences that have a longer lasting impact. Sometimes things you have complete easy access to, like a reality show, or an online purchase at the click of a mouse, can become forgetable and invisible. A trip to a record store to get the album you've been waiting months for on the other hand, can be cherished for a lifetime." [BBC]
• Willem Dafoe accidentally stabbed himself during a play years ago, but he still prefers doing his own stunts. He explains, "I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character." [The Telegraph]
• Katie Price said she "heard things" but about husband Peter Andre cheating on her but, "As far as I know I think he was faithful." He says, "I can hold my head up high and say I've been 100 per cent faithful throughout my marriage and still am." So everyone agrees he was faithful, right? [The Mirror]
• Johnny Depp said recently that he'd love to star in a Carol Channing biopic — and she's given him her blessing. "I imagine when or if Johnny should portray me, he will succeed," she said, "Because a true artist, such as himself, is one who loves his or her creation and therefore represents their honest view of that which they are creating. I think he is a gifted performer and I would be very proud, as well as interested, in seeing what his vision of me would be... Men have been imitating me for as long as I can remember. In fact, most of the impersonations I have seen have had a five-o'clock shadow." [E!]

Since the 1986 "War on Drugs" kicked off and introduced mandatory drug sentencing , the number of women in prison has risen 400 percent - amongst black women, the number is twice that. Of the women in prison, 80% have addictions, and more than 60% have minor children.

Addicts who give birth have it hard: because a woman can be prosecuted for using while pregnant, many avoid the prenatal care that their babies, in particular, need. What's worse, recovery programs, afraid of costly lawsuits, routinely refuse treatment to pregnant women. Once born, newborns who test positive for drugs are immediately put into foster care under the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act. Mothers entering treatment often have to waive all custody rights to their babies in order to get clean; the result is what the "Moms Living Clean" website refers to as "a generation of legal orphans." As one might imagine, the situation in prison is hardly less grim: from the mandatory handcuffing of women giving birth to the instant removal of new babies, the process is punitive and impersonal.

As an alternative to these traditional approaches, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, a Division of Federal Health and Human Services, has funded 35 innovative residential treatment and recovery programs for pregnant women and mothers of young children, all non-violent drug offenders. A new documentary, Moms Living Clean, by filmmaker Sheila Ganz, spends three years with the patients at one such experimental program, Center Point, Inc. Women and Children's Residential Treatment in San Rafael, California.

The 40-person facility provides a 6 month residential program, transitional housing, and medical, psychological, educational and vocational counseling. The six women chronicled - an abuse victim, one mother trying to break out of prostitution, several introduced to drugs by parents - thrive in the new atmosphere, gaining confidence, independence and forging relationships with their children. Says program director Dr. Sushma Taylor,

I have a 100% success rate, because as long as they're with me, they're clean, they're living a happy life and they are with their children. And that is success. I equate long term success with family reunification and the self-esteem enhancement that we're able to provide for our women, who perhaps have never worked in their lives, perhaps are third generation recipients of public benefits. We attribute that to instilling a value system… that starts with hope and has a lot of love attached to it. We believe that there is goodness in our clients when they don't believe they're worth too much. And since we believe in them, they begin to slowly believe in themselves. And when they believe in themselves there is empowerment.

As the documentary would have it, the story is unilaterally feel-good, a triumph of good over indifference, people over policy. And that's great. But given the amount of care, counseling, and funding expended upon each woman, it seems hardly likely that the government will be willing to institute such programs across the board. Then too, these are six women we are seeing, and very possibly six women specially selected as good candidates for the experiment; it's hard to say whether a larger-scale operation would run as well. That said, the real barriers are philosophical: the "war on drugs" makes enemies of addicts, casts their illness in moral terms, and its policies hinge on the notion that someone who's subjected her child to such risks is, by definition, unfit. Prisons are not in the business of redemption; that's why it's still a story when it happens. But these are stories we need to hear - and in this case, see. Feel good? Sure. But sometimes that's earned.

Moms Living Clean [Babble]
Moms Living Clean [Official Site]

I wouldn't be surprised if the writers of Mad Men loosely based the character of Betty Draper on Betty Ford. Both women had been fashion models living in New York City before they traded in their independence to settle down in a post-WW II suburban lifestyle to raise families and create homes for their husbands. Just like Draper is depicted on the show, Ford said that she felt as though her identity was lost in her new and limiting role as a wife and a mother. She began drinking to deal with the depression, and continued to take pain meds she'd been prescribed for a pinched nerve in the early '60s.

The lack of fulfillment felt by these two Bettys mirrors that of the women profiled in the book of another Betty: Betty Friedan's seminal The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, which argues that women are victims of a social structure that dictated that the importance and meaning of their lives be identified through their husbands and children.

In the documentary, Ford says that once her husband became Vice President, and then later President, she had a podium and an audience, and she took the opportunity to unleash the voice within now that there were people listening. She says, "I was amazed that I was this important person."

Ford worked to ratify the ERA and, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, was open about her disease in a way and at a time that many women weren't; in fact, she became an activist for breast exams and early detection.

In this clip, she speaks candidly about premarital sex and being pro-choice.

After her husband lost the election in 1976, and she no longer had such a public platform, depression set in again and her addictions became worse, until her family staged an intervention and she sought treatment in 1978.

Interestingly, when she established the Betty Ford Center in 1982, she insisted upon gender-specific treatment for addictions, because she noticed that women were able to speak more openly about their problems when men weren't in the room.

Betty Ford: The Real Deal [PBS]

Related: The Feminine Mystique [Amazon]

Douvall, a "glamour model" famous in Britain for having kissed and told about various celeb boyfriends, has had 15 boob jobs, facelifts, and repeated operations to change the shape of her face. Doctors in the UK will no longer treat her, so Douvall comes to the States for surgery and lies about her medical history. She says she has been known to walk into a surgeon's office without a clear idea of the procedure she wants, as long as she gets something. She tells the Independent, "Imagine playing Russian roulette with your life,t hat's what I'm doing. It's out of control, and has cost me more than £1m. Before I decided to come to Malibu, I'd accepted that I was going to carry on with it until I was either bankrupt or dead...I've had so many operations that I can't feel my stomach, my left breast, or anything under my right arm."

Douvall's a pretty clear case of body dysmorphic disorder, and it's heartening to know she's treating her addiction. Why she's doing it on a celeb rehab reality show is another matter, but we'll take the charitable approach and hope the example helps others with cosmetic surgery addictions. And if exposure is the only way certain celebrities can be induced to get help, well then, so much the better. The nature of the treatment is somewhat controversial, focusing as it does on "curing" addictions rather than adhering to the time-tested AA-style approach that addiction can only be managed. Douvall found the round of experts and intensive therapy so draining that she describes breaking down numerous times per day (which we would sort of assume is standard in rehab) and after the show wrapped, she stayed on an additional two weeks. Has it worked? Well, Douvall recently canceled an appointment for an upcoming "toe facelift," so we can only hope.

Alicia Douvall: Addicted To Cosmetic Surgery [Independent]

"The problem with Facebook is it's all about acquisition and this is an addictive process. Acquisition of friends is like any other fix but it's competitive — you judge yourself by how many friends you have online. You go out of your way to amass friends and that means people bend out of shape and become something they are not. To appear successful, you go and put yourself in credit card debt by buying clothes and handbags. I see patients who are on Facebook and my response is 'get yourself of it.'"

Smallwood warns that at least 10% of the population is at risk for this kind of "friendship addiction," but doesn't anyone think this is rather alarmist? Sure, some people are all about "collecting" friends on social networking sites, but if you're an addict, you're an addict: Facebook is not to blame. Painting this problem as a women-are-so-needy-and-out-of-control issue is something the Daily Mail does well; but one has to wonder: Why do some people find the need to competitively "collect" "friends"? What's the allure in having a high number of "friends" on Facebook or MySpace? What does it prove? Most people know you don't actually know and hang out with all of those people. Having lots of "friends" can't get you a better job or more money or true love. So seriously: What's the point?

Facebook To Blame For 'Friendship Addiction' Among Women [Daily Mail]

Related: Parents In Denial About Children's Weight Problems [Science Daily]