The Internet community, the media and addiction professionals have spoken out against VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Criticisms call the show “exploitive,” and say it’s really just another TV show with people playing to that fact. Faces and Voices of Recovery, a group for recovering addicts, even began a letter-writing campaign to the cable channel to complain about the show. And normally, honestly, I wouldn’t even care. But I have seen this particular reality show, and I can tell you in all seriousness it’s not like anything else on TV.

Leading man Dr. Drew Pinky, whose fatherly face and forty-nine-year-old fit form make him look more like star material than your average addiction expert, obviously doesn’t need VH1 to further his own career or find a spotlight. Pinsky has enjoyed the spotlight for two and a half decades, landing every type of gig from radio to movies. A genuine motive to help is what propels him to do the show, and while the same may not be said of all the recovering addicts on the show (but who can really tell?), Celebrity Rehab isn’t just another Surreal Life with a different package.

Celebrity Rehab plunges viewers into the frightening world of substance abuse and chemical dependency, the dark passages of the mind and childhood trauma, the terrible threat of a life with no real avenue of escape or flight. Patients in Rehab, while they may be wealthy stars, are not pampered or allowed to flee from their reality. They are made to face it - perhaps for the first time. This is not fluff for them to fill their careers - this is a real and true program meant to fill up their lives with much more meaning. And I, for one, hope deeply that it’s successful.