Maybe not everyone saw it coming, but Dennis Rodman rehab stints were bound to happen. His agent has confirmed that this has come to pass.
Rodman has struggled with alcoholism for years. Like many of us, he has not found recovery, despite having gone to treatment in the past. However, as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says, “We get worse—never better.”
That certainly appears to be the case. Not everyone’s story involves being an informal ambassador to one of the world’s most secretive, brutal, and despised regimes of the past century.
According to Rodman’s agent, the pressure that (naturally) came from this relationship became too much, and he went back to the bottle.
Rodman blames his rather bizarre outburst on CNN on being drunk. For those who did not see it, when Rodman was asked about what he was doing to help free an American missionary who is being held prisoner and who needs urgent medical treatment, he did not take it very well. Actually, that is putting it lightly: he had a pretty much full-on meltdown on live TV, rambling nonsensically at the show’s host for several minutes. Despite his friends’ attempts to calm him while all this was happening, Rodman consistently shouted back, “No, man! I got this!” Clearly, he did not.
If that is not an apt metaphor for alcoholism, what is?
Fortunately, the Dennis Rodman rehab story can continue. Fortunately, he broke down on live American TV and not at the North Korean leader. Fortunately, he was not kept in North Korea against his will, and was able to return to go to rehab.
He might not think so, but he is very, very lucky to have the chance to go back to treatment under any circumstances—let alone under the unique circumstances under which he has been.
While Kim Jong-un might be his “best friend,” Kim is not the same kind of friend you can tell-off in a moment of drunken belligerence, and ask forgiveness in the morning. This is the kind of friend who kills off his own family members for not being perceived as loyal enough, or to gain favor with others. This is the kind of friend who threatens to nuke entire countries off the face of the planet, and possibly bring about the end of the human race. This is the kind of friend who imprisons multiple generations of a whole family based on the actions of a single person.
He is under a lot of pressure? Yeah, we totally get that. Make that kind of friend in the first place? Well, we had “lower companions” as the Big Book calls them. Not on the same level as James-Bond-villain-esque, nuclear armed dictator, but certainly not the kinds of people you want to bring home to the family.
It also probably doesn’t help that North Korea makes stronger meth than Walter White.
Regardless of our backgrounds and the depths our disease takes us, we suffer from the same malady, and it has a similar conclusion without help. So, Mr. Rodman, we wish you the best.
Dennis Rodman Rehab Stints
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