Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again

Rating:
Summary: My life was broken repaired by Dr. drew
Review: Dr. Drew, God Bless you. You and Adam are what keep me from going insane. I can't wait until your book comes out in paperback so I can give a copy to all my siblings and nieces and nephews.

You are the man.

You have made the world a better place.

Take care. Please.

If you ever make it to Seattle I'll provide your show with enough coffee to float a boat.

Rating:
Summary: This is information that everyone should know
Review: I heard Dr. Pinsky on loveline talking about some of the negative reviews that he had been getting here on Amazon for his book, and I must say, I read this book and it contains not only information on the process of addiction and recovery, but some very profound insight into society as a whole and how different drug and alcohol factors will affect many people.

This is a must read if you know someone with drug or alcohol related issues.

Dr. Pinsky, this book is awesome. Don't let negative reviews on your book here get you down, they're just ignorent and probably too wasted to understand the meaning of your book anyways. Cracked gets 5 stars from me.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Listen To The Haters Drew...
Review: Dr. Drew's book is top drawer. Get it. Read it. Love it.

Rating:
Summary: Will The Real Dr. Drew Please Stand Up?
Review: I received the book "Cracked" as a Christmas present this past year and was looking forward to reading it, based on the inside sleeve description. Before reading the book, I had never heard of Dr. Drew Pinsky, Loveline, Adam Carolla, or Las Encinas. I just thought I would be reading an interesting and informative book on chemical dependency and its consequences written by a medical expert in the field of addiction. I found the book to be a somewhat interesting read that provided new information regarding the mechanics of addiction and how the brain processes addictive substances, etc. Throughout the book, Dr. Pinsky delighted in describing himself as a very compassionate, nurturing, empathic physican who wanted only to gain the trust of his patients and empower them to have faith in him, the staff, the system, and themselves. Very noble! So far so good. Apparently, the doctor realized from childhood that he was a "rescuer" and was therefore overwhelmed with angst throughout the book trying to sort through and separate his feelings for his patients and his own emotional involvement with their recovery. After I finished reading "Cracked", I began researching Dr. Drew and Loveline and have to say I am having trouble reconciling the Dr. Drew I came to know in the book, and the Loveline Dr. Drew. As I said, I had never heard of or listened to Loveline, but from what I can gather from my research on this program, Adam Carolla appears to play the role of Dr. Drew's sidekick "shock jock" with young callers who seem to be sincerely seeking out Dr. Drew's advice on the issues and problems in their lives. Perhaps one of these callers is the real thing, i.e. a blooming drug addict, sex addict, speeder, what have you. If these young callers are being used as a platform for Mr. Carolla's tasteless and superficial jock tactics as in blatantly making fun of callers, then I have to condemn Dr. Drew for "aiding and abetting" Mr. Carolla and the format of Loveline. If he was so darn caring and compassionate with his patients at Las Encinas during morning rounds, then how does he turn around and play a role in this charade of supposedly helping callers solve their own problems, but in a crude and belittling way? I'd like to know from the good doctor how he reconciles this dichotomy of roles and how he can condone, or even perhaps participate in, making fun of potential addicts for ratings points - or does his theme of faith and trust fly out the window as soon as he begins associating with Mr. Carolla?

I also have to agree with several previous reviewers in regards to the editing, or lack thereof, of this book. I am sick and tired of paying good money for books only to find they have been "quicky-edited" by some no-name editing house, and consequently are being published full of typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, and incorrect medical terminology or abbreviations. As a highly educated physician who dictates, and presumably proofs his transcribed medical reports, he should not allow his own publication to be released with such frequent and amateurish errors.

I'd say to Dr. Pinsky, please choose a field and stick with it. Either be a practicing physician, addiction specialist and author, or stick to the radio booth.

Rating:
Summary: Dr.Drew is the best!
Review: I love Dr.Drew,I listin to him everynight on LL.I think he is,as AC would put it "A Very,Very,Very,Very,Very,Very,EXTREAMLY passionet man!".
Dr.Drew,I love you.You are the the 4 s'es of greatnessss,Sweet,Sensitive,Smart and Sexy!
Your book is wonderful!Don't let the "bad" reviews get you down.I think there are more people that love your book,than don't,and the ones who don't,don't know what there talking about.
Your doing the Lords work,keep it up!I wish you nothing but the best,Hayley The LL Fanatic

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Summary: Dr. Drew the Actor
Review: I have never written a review or letter to the editor, but I am compelled to do so for this book.

Dr. Pinsky has become famous, and rich, treating the downtrodden, or those he likes to think of in that manner, and claiming the moral highground for doing so. His nauseatingly self-congratulatory book, which could be accurately subtitled "I'm-so-much-better-than-the-poor-wretches-I-treat," reveals more about his own neuroses than the plight of those who are admitted to the (outrageously expensive) treatment center he runs at Las Encinas in Pasadena. The book is nothing more than another self-promoting advertisement in the Hollywood side-show that he operates alongside his legitimate medical practice.

I say this based on my direct experience with him in the treatment program at Las Encinas, where I unfortunately landed nine years ago for a prescription drug problem. I am typical of those he loves to treat and to feel better than. I graduated summa cum laude from college; have a graduate degree from a top university; was on law review at a top law school. While I was there, a federal judge was also being treated. The place was populated with rich, successful individuals who feed this physician's addiction to dispensing advice to largely helpless people in the throes of despair. I found him, both as a physician and as an individual, to be overweeningly arrogant, uncaring, and egocentric -- many of the very traits that lead his "wards" (perhaps the most accurate description of those he treats there) to suffer the abuse problems he allegedly treats. It does not surprise me that in his pages he expresses ultimate mystification as to why people abuse substances and frequently return to the practice. The irony is that, for all his medical knowledge of addiction, he knows little about the people who suffer from it, as indeed he cannot given his own self-absorption.

When I arrived at Las Encinas -- broken, a career threatened, wife and child potentially lost, everything I was and had worked for on the line -- Dr. Drew, who describes himself as "putting broken lives back together," put me through a cursory 10-minute medical exam in which he was more concerned to answer incessant telephone calls that were put through to the office than to care for me or answer my plaintive questions. He fielded at least six calls (he couldn't have put them into voicemail?), in one of which he yelled at his medical secretary ("I have told you over and over again to tell the patient -- no pain medication, no pain medication, no pain medication!"), and, when I asked him about the health effects of my pill popping -- a serious question from my perspective -- he impatiently blurted out some dry facts and then ushered me out of the room.

Before buying this book, which narcissistically promotes this TV pop-physician, it is important for someone to know that the author is, at least from the perspective of this reviewer, a publicity-seeking, heartless hypocrite. I've stayed clean not because of Dr. Drew, but in spite of him. So much for the physician who puts broken lives together.

Addendum: Since writing my review, I have perused more of the customer reviews and am astonished at the slavishly positive recommendations it has received. The addicition/recovery business is alive, well, and gathers devoted adherents, like a religion, who have "belief" and capitulate to a higher power -- i.e., people like Pinksy. Truly, I do not know which group is more delusional or ill: addicts or those who purport to "treat" them. The first of the so-called 12 steps paradoxically requires what no therapist would ever recommend in any other context in which psychic improvement is the goal: an acknowledgement of complete powerlessness. How can one who has declared him or herself powerless have power to overcome? Answer: Pay fees for this book and to Pinsky and the hordes of addictionologists for consults after consults, and sit through a life time of insipid 12-step meetings where morons mouth the mindless litanies of the Big Book and repeat personal histories that all begin to sound the same. Worst of all, Pinksy consistently steps over, or at least perilously near, the line of his expertise in a manner that borders on the unprofessional. I live in the Glendale/Pasasdena area and have spoken to real psychologists in the area (i.e., those with psychology licenses). I can report that most are appalled -- at least off the record -- by how Dr. Pinsky dispenses essentially psychological advice on TV when he is merely a medical doctor. He should stick to addiction and not opine about topics outside his field of training. But alas, in a world where Dr. Phil and Depok Chopra sell millions of books, we should not be surprised at the success of Pinsky.

Rating:
Summary: The most important book of our times.
Review: Dr. Drew is not only the most insightful person in medicine today, but he brings a bit of comedy into his speaking and writing. i have listened to drew and adam on loveline for over 6 years now. I consider myself an addict of the show. any way of curring that DOC? haha. i think anyone with half a brain should pick this book up. you dont have to be an addict to read this and get somthing from it. in reality this book reaches many aspects of human nature and can help us all deal with everyday things. thank god that someone like Dr drew is around to tell it like it is and is there to help people on a daily basis. this man spends the greater part of everyday helping people and like most DR's he does not get the praise and rewards he deserves. I suppose that helping people is a reward in itself. i urge everyone to pick this book up and get your life pointing in the right direction. i'm a 22 year old male from las vegas, nevada. if anyone is intersting in discussing this book , please feel free to e-mail me, [e-mail] Dr drew, if you read this, i would greatly appreciate speaking to you. i'm currently attending UNLV to get my PHD in psychology. thank you and god bless. -forest sills

Rating:
Summary: Very insightful and compassionate memoir
Review: I really found this to be an excellent book and well worth a read for anyone interested in learning more about the specific types of circumstances and physical/mental pain that addicted people go through. Dr. Drew wrote this with a lot of compassion and insight, and rare spiritual perceptions, that listeners regular to Loveline rarely get to hear in my opinion.

I not only listen to Loveline nightly, but I've also recently completed a Substance Abuse class in college; reading this book helped me put a lot of the clinical and statistical information I learned into a real-world, real-life perspective. Dr. Drew describes the life circumstances and struggles of numerous addicted patients, some for whom he came to feel passionately responsible and protective.

Through his retelling, I learned their stories--mostly horrible and filled with sadness and abuse--and was thus able to associate the nameless, faceless addictions I'd learned about in college with some real living, breathing people I came to really feel for. If Dr. Drew is reading these reviews (which he admits to sometimes doing on Loveline), I hope he realizes what a wonderful impact he's having on his readers (including me), and how much many of us appreciate what he's shared in his excellent memoir. Kudos Dr. Drew!

Rating:
Summary: The Reason Addicts Never Recover Is In These Pages
Review: This book was so incredibly boring. I do not believe Pinsky once I got to the part about the things he found in people's bums in the emergency room. I have worked in an emergency room before and nobody ever came in with things stuck up there.
Does this man really talk to people this way?
Everything this man says sounds like he rehearsed it for an award winning speech. He toots his own horn and it is just tedious. He seems to want us to think he is a god because he is a doctor.
The reason recovery programs do not work in most cases is because of the people who run them. You cannot treat a junkie unless you have been a junkie or been severely affected by one. You can't learn about addiction from a book. If you haven't experienced it firsthand you have no idea what it is like. I was once very close to an addict . In the aftermath, a friend of mine gave me this book thinking it would help me to heal the loss of a good friend, and perhaps understand more.I do not agree that the characters in this book are junkies. I had to force myself to read it. Just because a mother in the suburbs of California pops a valium does not make her an "addict". There are doctors who sit in lush offices, treating movie stars and spoiled rich people who drink too much vodka. These doctors and EXTREMELY expensive programs think they are seeing and treating the harshest side of life and addiction? LOL! I do not agree that Pinsky knows what addiction is, except from a clinical view. Drop him off in the crack district of Chicago, take away his shoes,money and star status, then maybe he will be eligible to write a book on addiction.
If you want to read about hard core addiction, read "A Million Little Pieces".

Rating:
Summary: Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again
Review: You can feel the empathy he has for his patients in the way he describes their stories. Its heartbreaking but somehow hopeful. He takes his addiction medicine knowledge and communicates it in such a way that it feels like you aren't reading about these experiences, but living through them with his clarity. This was the most important book I've ever read. Dr. Drew is an amazing person who has so much to offer this world. I can't be objective about this book or this man. Im astonished that a person Ive never meant could have such a HUGE impact on how I see myself and the world around me. Everyone needs to buy and read this book!