Charlie Sheen surrounded by enablers
Mar-07-2011

Since getting sober more than two decades ago, Tom Arnold, the actor and comedian, has been a quiet force in Hollywood's recovery community, helping stage a number of interventions for drug-addicted executives and alcoholic stars.
But even a seen-it-all show business survivor like Arnold was stunned by what happened when he tried to pull his friend and former neighbor, Charlie Sheen, back from the brink.
''I went to a person close to him and said, 'This guy is in serious trouble with serious drugs. We've got to help him,'" Arnold recalled in an interview. "And this person flat-out told me to my face, 'We make a lot of money from him. I can't be part of it.' That tells you everything you need to know."
While bad behavior by star performers is tolerated in a number of industries - sports and high fashion, for example - Hollywood has a longer public history of aiding and abetting addicts. Doctors employed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer famously gave Judy Garland amphetamines and other drugs to combat fatigue and control her weight, setting up a life-long battle with drug addiction that she ultimately lost.
''One of the problems with the entertainment industry is that, to protect the image of these people, they try to deal with the problem by sweeping it under the rug," said John T. Schwarzlose, chief executive of the Betty Ford Center, the licensed addiction hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
In the case of a crack-smoking, prostitute-frequenting Sheen, many people in Hollywood say there is a long list of enablers: managers and agents and publicists; a coterie of assistants and party buddies; prostitutes, drug dealers and sex film stars; and the tabloid media, which have fed on Sheen's antics for years.
Their efforts may have sustained Sheen during his long career, but they seem to have finally backfired. As the lead actor of a No. 1- rated sitcom, Sheen is that rare commodity in today's Hollywood - a bankable and irreplaceable star - and his public crackup has come at perhaps the most valuable point in his career.
CBS, which broadcasts "Two and a Half Men" and Warner Brothers, which makes it, have shut down the remainder of this season and could lose more than $250 million in revenue if next season is lost as well.
That decision was made only after what executives from the two companies described as years of efforts to try to convince Sheen to concede he had serious addiction problems.
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