The entire idea, however, of showing celebrities going through substance-abuse treatment seems patently absurd. Isn't the nature of treatment privacy? Isn't the nature of treatment often the process of reflecting, which kind of has to take place in a situation other than being on television? I'm not an expert by any stretch, but when I see Celebrity Rehab mixed in with Celebrity Apprentice and Celebrity Mole, something seems to be seriously awry.

Shockingly, however, the show has turned out to be revealing and painful in a way more reminiscent of real documentaries than of, say, The Surreal Life. It's unglamorous, sort of depressing, and fairly unrelenting in its breaking down of celebrities trying to treat their addictions like quirks that they can talk about up to a point and then treat up to a point and continue up to a point.

The celebrities who are being treated have very, very different stories and addictions that seem to be at very different stages. Everybody's been reading about Jessica Sierra, whose drug habit has a (relatively) short history, but whose problems are severe (and, of course, accelerating). While the fact that her problems will not end here is well-known to readers of Defamer, seeing the tangle of problems she faces -- including not only an addiction, but serious issues relating to the death of her mother, whom she can barely mention without saying that she told her mother "I hate you" just before her mother died -- makes it easy to understand how, even with the best of intentions, she might have to be treated repeatedly before she finds any success, which in turn makes it easier to understand why Dr. Drew is still trying to treat her, long after filming ended.

At the other end of the scale as far as the length of his addiction is Jeff Conaway, who first encountered Dr. Drew during his run on Celebrity Fit Club, and who entered treatment literally unable to stand and literally taking drugs only with the "help" of his girlfriend, who held the rolled-up bill so he could snort cocaine when he physically couldn't manage it on his own. Conaway almost immediately wound up in the hospital, and was just as quickly busted for apparently still having drugs on him at the time he was admitted. Seeing Conaway barely able to speak is not a glamorous view of addiction. This does not look like a good life. Sometimes, seeing a 23-year-old movie star stumble out of a club drunk doesn't look quite as bad as it looks...rebellious. Jeff Conaway getting Icy Hot rubbed on his thighs because he's in so much pain does not look rebellious, and when he tries to play the "I can do whatever I want" card by threatening to leave treatment if they don't let his girlfriend leave on her own schedule, he doesn't look like a diva. He looks absolutely pitiable, and it's easy to understand why somebody like Sierra might find his presence inspiring, in its own awful way.

My personal pick for most insufferable patient is Daniel Baldwin, who kicked off his intake physical by announcing that he had been clean since November 2006, which meant many months by the time of filming -- he was only there, he said, to sort of refresh his sobriety. Just wanted to keep himself sharp, recovery-wise. He told Dr. Drew the "funny" story of going through what sounded like a mandatory drug test and testing positive for cocaine, despite the fact that he had been clean for soooooo long. Crazy, huh? He explained that they had assured him that cocaine sometimes oozes out of your fat cells months after you last used. Dr. Drew said very little, but simply told him, "I've never heard of that." In video extras over on VH1.com, he made the implied explicit -- the only way you test positive for cocaine, he said, is by using cocaine. So he's in a position where he knows, or thinks he knows, that Baldwin is lying, but he hasn't really forced the issue quite yet. What's even more galling is that Baldwin, because he's telling the story that he's been clean for months, enjoys playing the I'm Practically A Counselor! role, where he lectures the rest of the group about what it takes to stay clean, and specifically taking out after Conaway for apparently bringing in drugs and for being in such bad shape. I'm very curious about how long Baldwin will be allowed to play the goody-goody before he's confronted.

Other participants include Jaimee Foxworth, who had a minor career on Family Matters before becoming a heavy, heavy user of pot -- to the point where it put her in rehab, which...I'm not sure you see all that often; Shifty, the lead singer of Crazytown, who is sort of your prototype of the hard-drug-using rock star; Brigitte Nielsen, repeat reality-show participant and binge drinker, who, poignantly, is taking a special interest in helping Jessica understand what her mother might have been feeling prior to her death; Chyna, who claims not to be sure she needs rehab, but nevertheless seems to somehow...know she needs rehab; and Mary Carey, noted porn star who thinks she should probably stop drinking, but seems almost equally interested in quitting porn.

In the opening episode, really sad footage of Conaway semi-conscious was interspersed with, among other things, a very funny scene in which Carey had various sexual paraphernalia confiscated to the relief of her roommate, Chyna, who first begged to have the sex toys taken away and then offered Carey a Twizzler as a consolation prize of sorts. Ever since then, it's been a very odd mix of sadness and occasional bursts of genuine good humor.

It's hard to explain how this sort of show works, where it's trashy but not really trashy, and where it's inspirational but not in a sappy way. It's a concept that shouldn't be watchable at all, and yet it is. When Dr. Drew goes out to confront Jeff "I'm Quitting" Conaway and just tells him -- calmly, with the confidence that comes from knowing that some people will make it and some people don't, and all you can do is your best -- that he shouldn't leave, and it will all be fine, and then goes back inside? It's surprisingly affecting. This should be a terrible show, but...it's not.