In 2002 I walk out of my last AA meeting because the culture of recovery in Hollywood had changed. It had become a production of hip, slick, and cool. It had lost its shame. Hollywood sent recovery into the mainstream by putting a camera in the room, and turning the shame of hitting your bottom into a chance to be seen on TV.

When realty shows like “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” put a camera on an addict, it rewards them for bad behavior and puts off the chance at solid recovery. (Dr. Drew himself calls it a media intervention.) But it’s the financial rewards of Nielsen ratings that are helping to slowly kill actors like Charlie Sheen.

Hollywood paparazzi and media outlets flood the public with the comings and goings of troubled souls like Lindsay Lohan, plastering her image everywhere like a car crash you can’t stop rubber necking. Young actors in Hollywood and the MTV crowd see this stupid behavior and the limelight that goes with it and say to each other, “That doesn’t seem so bad. Let’s party.” It’s within that mode of exposure that the addict get’s lost inside the lens of Entertainment Tonight. Most addicts are at some level narcissist. Couple that with being an actor, and you have Siamese twins gazing blood shot into a reflecting pool of flash bulbs.

Hollywood’s long lists of addicts are simply egomaniacs with low self-esteem. However, once the actor/addict gets sober, most are just not that interesting in public and the media looses interest. The upside of this personal discovery are people like Robert Downey Jr.; who has flourished as a performer and person since he really “got it.”

A troubling new trend has taken hold of Hollywood’s production of addiction. The mixture of reality TV and recovery, taking regular people in deep despair and shining a light on their fall from grace so shoes and sugar-coated-cereal can be sold at commercial breaks.

One such show currently playing on The Learning Channel is, “My Strange Addiction.” In one episode the camera follows a young woman who is addicted to eating couch cushions, that’s right, couch cushions. The camera followers her through her day while she snacks on small bits of yellow foam, kept hidden in her handbag.  A family member confronts her and they send her for a free therapy session with a doctor who asks, “So how old were you when your father left?”

There’s no follow up that proves handling her addiction on camera is helpful, so for all we know as viewers, she may be halfway through the living room furniture while waiting for the cameras to return so she can get motivated to do something more about her addiction.

It doesn’t matter what the addict is addicted to, it all acts out in the same way, the endless craving for more. For some, Hollywood has made that endless craving all about the fix of getting more media to cover their own demise.

Shame used to be that place where a person openly cowers in passive emotion while being in a public place. Now with the production of recovery in Hollywood, hair and makeup is put on a person’s shame before they smile for the camera and say, “Look Grandma I’m on TV. Can you Paypal me some money?”

There is no right or wrong way to get sober. There is only the quiet reach of the person who digs within for sobriety because they want it, not because they need it, and not because they want to be on TV. Capturing footage of that process for profit is something only Hollywood could tell the public is good for all involved.

Somewhere deep inside Charlie Sheen is a humble man that desperately wants to get out and sweep the floor. But as long as Hollywood keeps him in the limelight for his deplorable behavior he won’t “get it.” And if he manages to die from his addiction he’ll end up like the rest, a t-shirt or coffee mug sold on the Sunset Strip… A movie of the week at best.

All through the campaign Barack Obama told us not to listen to the “politics of fear.” These are the ways of the old guard, the naysayers, the negative ones - he said. Those who won’t sit and talk with the bad men are the warmongers - he called them. These are the guys who created our enemies, he inferred. Don’t listen when they use words like “terrorist” and ”disaster” and ignore the call to be vigilant. It’s a neo-con ruse. It’s a plot to scare you.

So what has our president been saying lately? The economic slump is a “continuing disaster,” he told us. He said the economy is “in crisis.” Back in December he told us it was “going to get worse.” Recently he warned of a “national catastrophe” if the stimulus bill wasn’t passed. He kept his speech before the joint session somewhat more positive in a stylistic sense (style points count when you blow off your promise about not tolerating any earmarks). But still, again down goes the Dow.

I can’t remember a president in my lifetime who out of the gate, has been so pessimistic and directly affected the markets so negatively. This man sits in the most powerful position on the globe. His words BOOM above every other chief on the planet.  A president says it – the world listens. He keeps telling us he inherited this problem. No sir, you wanted this problem. You ran on it, with it and for it. Time to stop the blame and deliver on your promises, deliver on your hope. The markets need some.

Now, say for instance you have several million dollars and are thinking about investing in a start up business but you turn on the tube and the leader of the free world is saying words like “disaster” and “crisis” and other doom gloomy tidbits. Maybe you put your dinero back in your pocket? I think so.

Or, you employ a crap load of people and are teetering on some layoffs due to the fear that things just might get worse, and you punch up the boys at MSNBC playing some tape of our president doing the henny penny deal. Hmmmmm, maybe Bob Cratchit needs to go, after all. Screw, Tiny Tim.

Obama laid the groundwork for the market’s fear of him during the campaign by inferring capitalists were villains, and wealthy folks were their henchmen.  Pure class warfare. Earth to the White House: Big business employs people.  

In order to help Main Street, we need to make sure there are some stores left on Main Street. And in order to help the worker, we have to be sure he has a place to work.  Watching corporations and passing sensible regulation is fine, but turning them into villains and crying disaster every five minutes has its repercussions. The repercussions are evident in the markets. We need a leader who can instill pride, confidence and a spark in the American worker, and most importantly in the American corporation. Like it or not, we depend on corporations for almost everything we touch. 

During WWII, when England cringed under Hitler’s bombs, Winston Churchill inspired a nation to come together, to persevere through adversity, and he told them that in doing this, it would be their “finest hour.”

However, we keep hearing the bad news. We keep hearing how bad all those nasty corporations are. Mr. President, you need to inspire, not fatigue.  You need to lift us up and grease the wheels of commerce (hint: lower their tax burden).

Being so unhopeful, you’re sounding to us like a sort of Anti-Churchill.

“We will hand out on the land, we will hand out on the sea, we will punish the wealthy. We will reward failure and incompetence, debtors and greed; with a new start. We will transfer the wealth. We will demand that those who planned and saved, worked and sacrificed, turned down the vacations, and didn’t run up debt, PAY UP to help you – my overspending brothers and sisters.”

To me it is plain as day; our president must inspire hope in business, as well as the common American. He needs to remind us that we have gone astray in our personal spending and debt, and spur on the corporations.  

Americans are addicted to credit and spending. It’s time to realize that we as a nation have a personal problem and we need to take the personal steps to correct it. Not everyone can afford the best cars, houses, toys, vacations. Credit needs to be paid back, and at a much higher cost. Addiction is a nasty thing, and denial is part of the problem. So by taking the focus off our real problem, and praying for the leader to bail us out, we just might be hiding the problem that is still there. They say addicts sometimes trade one addiction for another, then delude themselves into thinking they have truly kicked their addicted ways.So just maybe, America is trading it’s addiction to spending… for its addiction to Obama.