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John Sharp
The Celebrity Rehab shrink talks about voyeurism, addiction and East vs. West Coast craziness.
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The Celebrity Rehab shrink talks about voyeurism, addiction and East vs. West Coast craziness.
Dr. John Sharp, MD, is a psychiatrist and neuropsychiatrist best known to the public as one of the therapists on Celebrity Rehab. He is also the author of the book The Emotional Calendar. A specialist in treating attention deficit, mood and anxiety disorders, Sharp maintains clinical practices in both Boston and Los Angeles. In addition to being on staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he teaches at Harvard Medical School and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He divides his time between Boston and Los Angeles.
First of all, aren’t all shrinks crazy?
Most shrinks might be crazy, but one of the reasons that Harvard Medical School likes to parade me in front of the students is to demonstrate that not all are.
I am. I was concerned that the process of becoming a shrink might make me less sane, but I was assured that the folks who have a hard time with that were already having a hard time before the process began.
John Sharp: Maybe cyclothymia, which is periods of feeling a little down sometimes and periods of feeling a little up sometimes, but not really fully qualifying for depression or mania. I can relate to moodiness.
Everybody’s got issues, and for some people they’re more of a problem. There’s an ailment medical students get when they read about all the different illnesses. They think, “I’ve got this. I’ve got that.” It turns out that everybody, or most people, have a little something wrong with them and it’s important to be honest about that.
Absolutely. All the time. Whether it’s sex or yoga or three martinis. We all pick different poisons, and some are more toxic than others.
Celebrity Rehab
When I started on the show, on the first day, one of the executive producers sat down and said, “Listen. Some of these people are here because they like the money. Others think it will help their careers. But there’s a third group of people who really want help and they know they’re going to get it.” I said, “Can you tell me who’s who?” And he said, “That’s for you to figure out.” So there are competing motivations.
My major interest is to demonstrate to the public how psychiatry can be helpful. On the show, one of the cast came in and said to me, “I had this dream of being chased, and I think I was abused.” I looked up at her and said, “Jessica, if you didn’t think you were abused until last night, you probably weren’t, and the thing you were probably running from is your addiction. You’re newly sober. But if you really want to talk about this further, why don’t we do it off-camera.” So it doesn’t have to be exploitative.
One of the people on the show who the public really seemed to have a problem with was Michael Lohan. He would come to me and I would say, “OK, this guy’s from New York. He worked on Wall Street. He’s a complicated guy.” I think I did get him.
Not everyone fits the geographic profile, but it definitely is interesting to me, the difference in values. The East Coast is all about the interiors, traditions, where you’re from, and the West Coast, which is all about exteriors and surface and who you know.
Rich people have more means to either treat or ignore their problems, and actually, as you go down the socioeconomic ladder, you tend to have more problems, both with respect to mental health and substance abuse.
Yes. There are correlations within the week to the seasons or months of the year. Thursday is like the June of the week, with a lot of promise ahead, and Sunday is like August 31st. You can have six problems on a Friday afternoon and not one of them really gets you down, but the same set of problems on a Monday will ruin your day.
Stress goes up during the holidays. It’s not a clinical depression. That peaks at the end of the holidays. Psychiatric admissions peak in January. And interestingly, suicide peaks in April. We think it has to do with the fact that spring is coming, and the last thing you can stand is people getting happier.
Certainly one of them. I think we live in a culture that sets unrealistic expectations on us and has an unrealistic ideal of beauty.
ADD is both over-diagnosed and under-diagnosed. There are pockets of affluence where it seems like every kid is diagnosed with it, but with the vast majority of the country, it escapes notice.
They’re so heavily invested in their bottom line and spend so much money bringing a molecule to market, they need to be fairly aggressive about marketing. But a good doctor has to learn how to deal with that.
Celebrities are surrounded by people who say yes to them all the time. They start to believe that their wishes are everyone else’s commands, and that the consequences of transgressions or bad decisions become less apparent, at least for a while. The combination of enablers and an apparently consequence-free environment can lead to serious trouble.
I find most reality TV kind of scary. I was really concerned when I was initially approached by Celebrity Rehab. I was so concerned about making sure that it wasn’t exploitative, and that it showed a real, authentic treatment routine.
A healthy balance. A good plan to be both productive and enjoy yourself. Having the time to take care of yourself in whatever form that might take.
Hard drugs. Speed and coke are probably the worst. Heroin is, too. They’ll kill you, and if you’re an addict, meaning you cannot control your use, which about 10 percent of the population is prone to be, it’s terrible. If you’re not an addict, you can maybe dabble and maybe be OK. It’s dangerous, and probably illegal. But with alcohol, for instance, if you can control it, there’s no reason not to enjoy a drink or two.
I think it is a gateway drug, because it’s the first time kids probably are dealing with another world they can’t share with their parents. It’s kind of a slippery slope that can lead them into bigger trouble. But I think that marijuana is only psychologically addictive, not physiologically, and if you smoke a little bit, it’s fine. The wake and bake I’d say is a problem.
That’s true and important for parents to know. If you misrepresent the evils of weed to your kid, they may minimize their parents’ advice even more than kids typically do. But pot is an entry into an illegal world where there are lots of other things that kids won’t feel comfortable talking to their parents about.
No. He’s a very grounded guy. But he’s on camera, so he may get edited to seem a certain way. But when you see him with patients, he’s not as self-righteous as they come. Not by a long shot.
Yes. Not so much the listening part but helping them does. It makes you feel like you’re doing something meaningful.
All the time. I just don’t want people thinking I do it in a derogatory way. I do it in a shorthand way. The other day, I was talking to Harvard med students about people who can’t tell the difference between their fantasy and reality, and I said, “This is what crazy is. These are people who are really out there.” But a good doctor would never speak disparagingly of his patient, and I don’t say those things in a derogatory way.
Yes it can. That’s a fairly dramatic cure. But light therapy is the way to treat it. That, or an anti-depressant called Wellbutrin.
It’s funny you say that. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. When you see someone say something completely absurd, or walk into a room and just not pick up on any social cues, you wonder whether they’re just being a jerk or whether they really have no clue socially and might be suffering from Asperger’s.
I haven’t personally evaluated him so I can’t diagnose him. But I think he’s an example of those kind of behaviors when someone has a mood disorder, maybe coupled with a substance problem, and they’re really not owning up to it. When we were watching him act out in the media during March, it was just awful. I hated it. He seems to have gone quiet now, so I wonder if maybe this is the downswing. It’s scary, though.
A lot. People’s physical surroundings are often a reflection of their inner psyche and they also influence the way people feel. Everybody does perform better in their lives when their environment is structured and orderly.
[Laughs] Yes, if you come see me and I determine that you could really benefit by them. I can happy you up, but we need to have a diagnosis to base that on.
