Backstreet Boy A. J. McLean, 33, has suffered from drug and alcohol addiction for years. He went to rehab in 2001 and then again in 2002. McLean has publicly said “his addictions are the hardest thing he has ever had to go through and that he lives with them every day of his life.” Before checking himself into rehab January 10th, 2010 for the third time – McLean was really out of control. Apparently for months he has been causing his fans, his fellow band mates, his family and his friend’s problems and concerns. In his second stint of rehab – his band members led by Kevin Richards held an intervention and this time the situation got so bad people who work with him threatened to quit.
TMZ further reports: “Sources close to the singer said A.J. became so difficult to work with during rehearsals for the upcoming BB tour that multiple people were “ready to quit.”
I was a big fan of the Backstreet Boys and saw them many times in concert. There were always rumors circulating that A.J. was out of control. What concerns me is like his second bout in rehab A.J. seems to have been left with little choice but to go to rehab.
There are really two ways that addicts wind up in rehab. Sometimes they have an epiphany and realize that they can’t go on abusing-ruining the lives of everyone around them and their own so they take the first big step towards recovery by putting themselves in a safe environment. Unfortunately most addicts wind up in rehab for the other reason-they are forced to go either by the law, or and intervention, or just having nowhere else left to go and no resources with which to get there. Of the two basic ways of getting to rehab you can imagine which one has a greater rate of success-obviously it’s the first, voluntary method that tends to produce the lasting results.
McLean has already that although he is going to rehab he will be ready for the upcoming Backstreet Boys tour. Obviously with an attitude like this Mclean is neither ready nor willing to acknowledge the degree of his problem. He confuses a forced cessation of drug and alcohol consumption and the intendant short period of sobriety with recovery while his addictions are waiting like monsters in the shadows to destroy him again. Well if this does not work for him there is always Dr. Drew!