Celebs Who Faked Going To Rehab
What would ever possess a star to fake a stint in rehab? In some cases, the reports are drummed up by caffeinated publicists, trying to do damage control while their client flies off the rails. Other times, a star gets cold feet, or tries to quit cold turkey, or decides their problems can be alleviated by another nice cold one. Occasionally, dueling sources tell tabloids conflicting stories, with one "insider" claiming a celeb has checked into rehab, while another insists he's at the club pounding shots and pumping fists to "Who Let the Dogs Out?" In those cases, it's hard to know who to blame, or what to believe.
While relatively rare in the world of celebrity gossip, there are certainly some standout examples of fake rehab stories that are worth closer inspection. For example, before seeking help in earnest, Charlie Sheen's idea of rehab was apparently his idea of partying, too: namely, staying cooped up in his mansion, probably screaming about ninjas. Buffalo Bills' publicists bent over backward to let the world know that former defensive tackle Marcell Dareus was heading to rehab to deal with substance abuse issues, but the NFL star admitted weeks later that he'd simply hired a life coach and ADHD specialist. And then there's Lindsay Lohan, allegedly leaping over the walls of the Betty Ford Clinic and assaulting staffers in a mad quest to resume her modus operandi.
Let's look at some of the more suspicious rehabilitation reports. We'll let you decide if these stars could pass a polygraph test, or even a breathalyzer.
Isaiah Washington: Rehab was 'some crap' made up by execs
During a heated argument with Grey's Anatomy co-star Patrick Dempsey in October 2017, actor Isaiah Washington landed in scalding-hot water by reportedly shouting, "I'm not your little f****t like [T.R. Knight]!" He drew more ill-received attention to those anti-gay remarks the same year at the Golden Globes. Shortly after, Washington announced he was entering counseling, telling People he regarded it as "a necessary step towards understanding why I did what I did." Even Grey's Anatomy Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes praised the move, saying, "We applaud and encourage Isaiah's realization that he needs help and his subsequent choice to seek immediate treatment."
But the damage had apparently already been done: Washington was let go from the show. Shortly after his termination, he told Newsweek that all that talk about rehabilitation had been completely trumped up by enterprising ABC execs. "There is no rehab for homophobia," he scoffed. "That was just some crap being put out by the network."
It's worth noting he did enter some sort of "executive counseling program" (whatever that is) in order "to understand my fight with Patrick." He claimed network execs decided to "call it what they wanted to fit their agenda."
We're going to have to side with former Grey's co-star Katherine Heigl, who once told Access Hollywood (via ABC News) that Isaiah Washington "just needs to stop talking."
Charlie Sheen reportedly decided staying at home was rehabby enough
If you don't actually go to rehab, chilling out in your LA mansion is at least rehab-adjacent, is it not?
In 2011, Charlie Sheen came out as a "warlock," acknowledged he was "on a drug; it's called Charlie Sheen," and revealed he's not so much bipolar as "bi-winning!" Perhaps not coincidentally, 2011 was also the year Sheen's manager announced that the actor had finally checked himself into a rehabilitation facility.
However, Sheen reportedly opted to stay at home instead. In fact, the former Two and a Half Men star reportedly — perhaps tauntingly — texted none other than Dylan Howard, the senior executive editor of Radar Online, to rant that "people don't seem to get it ... Guy can't have a great time and do his job also?"
Well, guy can, although it's generally frowned upon to have a "good time" mere days after your rep released a statement claiming you've "voluntarily entered" a rehab clinic. At the time, Sheen's manager, Marc Burg, went to great lengths to assure concerned fans that "with the help of friends and family, [Sheen] finally agreed to go and went into rehab."
Evidently not. A source later told the tab that the Anger Management star didn't think he needed professional help, "He is still up until all hours of the night and is refusing to get [treatment] at an outside facility," the spy said.
Maybe Sheen learned that the Promises rehab center for the stars doesn't serve tiger's blood on tap.
Lamar Odom: The rehab stint that almost definitely wasn't
Back in 2013, there was no escaping around-the-clock updates on Lamar Odom's latest bender. The two-time NBA champ was arrested on a DUI for driving in a "serpentine manner at 50 mph" and caught reportedly downing shots of Patron at Beacher's Madhouse a few months later. The retired Lakers player, at the time still married to ex-wife Khloe Kardashian, was allegedly seeking treatment in the wake of that DUI.
On Sept. 4, 2013, People reported that he'd checked himself into a rehab center after much soul-searching. "He realized he needs help," a source told the magazine. As cheering as that update must have been to concerned fans, the narrative drastically changed less than 24 hours later.
The next day, People reported that Odom had checked out "about a day after seeking help for drug problems," with sources insisting they saw him leave the drug and alcohol rehabilitation center with an assistant.
Then TMZ blew a gaping hole in that story, reporting that he'd never set foot into rehab at all, but had merely "gone off the radar with the Kardashian family."
Odom's troubles with drugs and alcohol continued to spiral for several years after this incident, until the baller really did check into rehab in 2016. We think. He made that decision about a month after a near-fatal overdose overdose, saying "I committed suicide enough already."
Lindsay Lohan: Her 13th step was allegedly the corner bar
If you sneak out of rehab to go drinking, were you ever actually in rehab at all?
Following a DUI arrest, Lindsay Lohan was in the middle of a court-ordered visit to the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, Calif., when a chemical technician named Dawn Holland allegedly caught the actress in the middle of some decidedly shady business. According to the story Holland told TMZ, the Herbie Fully Loaded star and two equally parched fellow patients "snuck out," "went drinking," and were seen "trying to jump over the back wall" to get back into their respective rooms at the clinic. This was reportedly around 1 a.m., which is well past curfew at the Betty Ford Clinic, particularly if you happen to be wasted.
Holland, who was ultimately fired from the clinic for blabbing to the media, claimed Lohan "grabbed my wrist and snatched it down" while Holland tried to call authorities. She claimed Lohan was "twisting and pulling [her arm] for 8-10 seconds" and told TMZ the Mean Girls star "had alcohol on her breath." None of these details were evidently scrawled into Lindsay Lohan's Betty Ford Clinic diary.
Holland later sued Lohan, and the case was settled out of court. Perhaps Lohan just wanted the whole brouhaha to go away like so many theoretical Skyy mini-bottles out the window of a Mercedes SL65.
Josh Duggar: Was rehabilitation a fakeout?
In the wake of the Ashley Madison hack of 2015, it was discovered that 19 Kids and Counting star Josh Duggar had reportedly cheated on his wife, Anne Renee Duggar. According to People, he soon checked into a "faith-based" rehabilitation center called Reformers Unanimous in Rockford, Ill. for a six-month stay to treat his sex addiction.
"I have been the biggest hypocrite ever," Josh said in a statement. "While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet." Oh, if that were only the half of it.
Some disconcertingly observant fans may have unearthed evidence that Josh faked that rehab stint. In 2017, In Touch examined a throwback Facebook photo (above) posted by the Duggars from "a while back," which looks like it was taken in 2015 — the same time Josh was supposedly in treatment. Though the face is cropped out, the man's physique in the photo certainly bears a suspiciously striking resemblance to the former used car salesman.
Whether or not Josh physically attended Reformers Unanimous, the actual rehabilitation center has some intensely sketchy credentials in its own right. Its official website claims to "restore those in addictive behaviors with the power of the victorious hidden life found only in Jesus Christ," and yet it appears that no trained psychologists work there. According to Gawker, Josh "paid $7,500 to study the Bible and work for free for [six months]."
In other words, he may have gone to rehab that wasn't actually rehab.
Did Tila Tequila drop out of Celebrity Rehab before being asked to join?
In 2010, former reality star Tila Tequila reportedly made the unprecedented move of quitting a show she was never asked to join.
According to the New York Daily News, the self-professed "white supremacist" used up the world's remaining supply of exclamation points to announce she was joining VH1's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew: "So it's OFFICIAL! I am confirmed and have definitely decided to sign on to join 'CELEBRITY REHAB 4 WITH DOCTOR DREW' on VH1!!!!!!!!!!"
It seems nobody was more surprised at the news than Tequila's rep at the time, who told the Daily News, "There was no confirmed time that she was going to be a part of Celebrity Rehab."
Maybe the tiny Twitter troll had merely dreamt of being invited onto the show, as she was allegedly battling an addiction to the sleeping pill Ambien at the time. An insider told Radar Online: "She would wake up, snort Ambien, Google herself, do more, Twitter all day and then sleep." Perhaps even more disturbingly, the tabloid referred to Tequila's departure from Celebrity Rehab as a "major blow" to the show.
The truth about all this remains elusive. Radar Online claims Tequila was axed; the New York Daily News strongly implies she was never asked to join. The only person who knows for sure is Tequila's murderous alter ego, Jane.
Marcell Dareus didn't really go to rehab, but he 'learned a lot'
After being suspended In August 2016 for four games for "either failed or missed drug tests involving his use of marijuana," Buffalo Bills' former defensive tackle Marcell Dareus announced he'd be sorting himself out in rehab. (He was also suspended in 2015 for one game because of another marijuana-related incident.) Through an official statement issued by Buffalo Bills PR, Dareus said, "I feel this is the best decision for me, my family and my teammates as I move forward with my career." Former general manager Doug Whaley encouraged the decision at the time, saying, "Marcell is family and we are fully supporting him."
But Dareus never truly sought treatment for drug use, which he happily admitted to USA Today a few weeks after the initial wave of publicity. He did, at least, take a few steps towards self-improvement. He reportedly hired a "life coach" and an ADHD expert.
So, after the Bills' PR team went to such lengths to promote Dareus' rehab stint, why on Earth didn't he go? He somewhat sidestepped this line of questioning, telling USA Today a medical team wanted "to evaluate and get a better understanding of making the right, positive course of action for exactly what I need to do myself." He added: "I really feel like I learned a lot."
This evidently wasn't enough to win him any special favor with first-year Bills' General Manager Brandon Beane, who traded Dareus to the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2017.
Zac Efron: Sushi run or drug deal?
Drug binge or Bincho Maguro run? In 2014, Zac Efron claimed he drove with his bodyguard to a sketchy part of downtown Los Angeles to pick up some succulent sushi — a story that several of Efron's close friends found fishy, according to TMZ. At the time, the story was everywhere because on that fateful Saturday evening, the pretty boy and his bodyguard were attacked in LA's Skid Row late at night while innocently hunting down some chow. The High School Musical star reportedly got punched in the face by a malevolent drifter.
TMZ reported that Efron's friends were "worried sick" about the incident, strongly suspecting that Efron was actually prowling around downtown in hopes of scoring cocaine. "Zac's a loner," a source told the tabloid. "The idea of him driving for miles to go to some sushi restaurant in downtown L.A. after midnight is preposterous."
The tabloid made quite a few hardcore accusations, reporting that Efron's bodyguard was also "a convicted drug dealer" and claiming the actor never went to rehab as he'd promised ... despite numerous reports claiming he sought treatment in 2013. A TMZ source claimed Efron was actually receiving "private therapy" at a personal friend's house.
None of us may ever know what really happened during Efron's notorious late-night sushi run of 2014.
Demi Lovato decried drug abuse while using drugs
In 2011, a Blind Gossip item asked the world to guess the identity of a troubled female star. The celebrity in question was the progeny of a so-called enabling mother, who'd told the press her daughter was in rehab when she was actually holed up in a Chicago hotel "shopping and getting spa treatments."
Pretty much everyone guessed the subject of the piece was pop star Demi Lovato, who admitted in her Simply Complicated documentary that she'd often lie about her sobriety while actively partying behind the scenes: "I wasn't working my program," she says in the film (via USA Today). "I wasn't ready to get sober. I was sneaking it on planes, sneaking it in bathrooms, sneaking it through the night. Nobody knew."
All these snorty, sneaky shenanigans allegedly occurred in 2010 while Lovato was in rehab and just 18 years old. She apparently found shrewd, if not entirely groundbreaking strategies, to buck the system, too: "I would take my drug tests with other people's pee," she confesses in the film.
Ultimately, an emergency meeting with her entire team made Lovato realize that if she didn't clean up her act, her music career might land in the toilet like so many licked cellophane baggies. The "Sorry Not Sorry" singer says in the documentary (via Vulture) that the moment was the "beginning of the process of surrendering." Later that night, to make sure she had no way of contacting her drug dealers, Lovato smashed her phone and dunked it in water.