Summer House

NEW YORK (AP) — Steven Tyler sought the "safe environment" of rehab last month to recover from more than just surgery — the Aerosmith frontman now says was fighting a dependency on pain and sleep medication.

"To have your feet done, to have your leg done, you have to be on narcotics," Tyler told The Associated Press on Friday. "You have to be on sleep aids at night. I don’t know about Joe (Perry) but I was off and running and I didn’t like the me that was me."

Tyler released a statement in late May saying he checked into a rehab facility in search of a "safe environment" to recover from several foot surgeries and physical therapy. Tyler said the procedures were to correct longtime foot injuries resulting from his physical performances as the singer for the blues-rock band.

"This was a month ago, so I just put the brakes on and checked into detox and just pulled the plug on all of it," he told the AP on Friday night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, where he and bandmates were promoting "Guitar Hero 3: Aerosmith."

The 60-year-old was known for heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s, but completed rehabilitation in 1986, after which Aerosmith enjoyed a successful revival.

Reuters - In a frank interview the singer revealed she took drugs while she was being treated for her heroin addiction earlier this year.

She was sent to the Essex clinic by her record label after a video clip of her smoking crack was released to a tabloid paper.

But she told Rolling Stone magazine she didn’t stay long and did drugs throughout her stay.

"I’ve never been to rehab, I mean, done it properly. I’m young, and I’m in love, and I get my nuts off sometimes. But it’s never been like, ‘Amy, get your life together."

The troubled star also explained she was having a difficult time because her husband Blake Fielder-Civil is in prison.

"To be honest, my husband’s away, I’m bored, I’m young. I felt like there was nothing to live for. It’s just been a low ebb."

This weekend, the singer checked out of another hospital, The London Clinic, where she had been staying for the past few weeks to be treated for the lung disease emphysema.

Winehouse, a multiple grammy winner, performed to 80,000 fans at Glastonbury on Saturday wearing a blue sequinned cocktail dress.

However the performance soured during the end of the set when she lunged into the audience and clashed with an unseen reveller as she sang her most famous hit, Rehab.

After the set, she was whisked back to The London Clinic by helicopter, and 24 hours later she had left the clinic.

Her spokesman said: "Amy did return to hospital after her Glastonbury performance but her doctors recommended that she continue as an outpatient,"

But friends and music bosses fear that she will struggle to keep the drugs away.

Music executives told The Daily Mirror that she was "effectively under house arrest" and being monitored by a security guard, stationed outside her house, to avoid drug dealers coming near her.

The prescription drugs allegedly found in Al Gore III’s possession this week are favorites among young people, according to drug abuse experts, who say prescription drugs may soon overtake street drugs in popularity.
 

Some young people perceive that prescription drugs are safer than street drugs, experts say.
 

"I wouldn’t be surprised if right now at this point in time, there are more kids abusing prescription drugs than abusing marijuana," said Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and president of CASA, the National Center on Alcohol and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
 

Gore was arrested on charges of possessing — in addition to marijuana — Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and Adderall.
 

According to a CASA report, between 1993 and 2005 the proportion of college students abusing Vicodin and other opiods went up 343 percent, about 240,000 individuals. The numbers increased 450 percent, or by 170,000 students, for tranquilizers such as Xanax and Valium, and 93 percent, or 225,000 students, for stimulants, including Adderall.
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Prescription drug abuse is particularly common among upper middle class students, according to Lisa Jack, a clinical psychologist at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
 

"It just goes to show that where you’re from doesn’t matter," Jack said.
 

And young people don’t have to go far to get these drugs. "Prescription drugs are very easy for kids to get," Califano said. "They can get them from the Internet. They can get them from their parents’ medicine cabinets. They can get them from their friends."
 

He said often students get them from friends who were prescribed these drugs legitimately.

"Kids sell them to each other," Jack said. "Drug trading happens all the time."
 

Experts say it’s particularly a problem with Adderall, a drug prescribed legitimately to millions of young people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
 

According to CASA, more than a third of children ages 11-18 in Wisconsin and Minnesota who’d been prescribed Adderall and other ADHD medications reported being approached to sell or trade their drugs.
 

And often they say yes, according to one Canadian study that found one out of four teens who’d been legitimately prescribed Ritalin gave or sold some of their drugs.
 

Another appeal to prescription drugs, besides the easy access, is that young people often perceive them as safer.

"They don’t have to go to the streets and deal with some guy they don’t know and get marijuana where they don’t know what’s in it," Califano said. "Also, they see their parents using these drugs, so they seem safe."

Jack said prescription drugs can be more challenging to treat than addiction to street drugs. "In traditional drug abuse, addicts can say, ‘I’ve been using meth or coke or pot,’ and an addiction specialist knows what to do," she said. But with prescription drugs, "sometimes the kids don’t even know what they’ve been taking. They just pass the pills around."
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Part of the solution would be for drug makers to formulate their products so they’re harder to abuse, said Califano, adding that anti-drug campaigns also should focus more on prescription drug abuse.

Parents need to do their part as well, he said. "When I was a kid in Brooklyn, when parents had liquor, they locked up the liquor cabinet," he said. "Maybe parents need to lock up the medicine cabinet."

LONDON, England (AP) — Scotland Yard started an investigation Wednesday into a video that allegedly shows troubled British singer Amy Winehouse smoking crack.

The British tabloid, The Sun, released grainy footage showing Grammy-nominated Winehouse, 24, inhaling fumes from a pipe. The video was reportedly shot hours before she attended a court hearing for her jailed husband.

Police will look at the video before deciding whether any charges should be brought against Winehouse, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said while speaking on condition of anonymity in line with force policy. The Sun gave the police the video, he said.

 Winehouse spokesman Shane O’Neill said he was unable to comment on the investigation. In the video, Winehouse lights a pipe in front of a photo that appears to have been taken on the day of her wedding to Blake Fielder-Civil. Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse, said in an interview with The Sun that he was devastated by the images and hoped it would prompt his daughter to turn her life around.

"Your video of Amy taking drugs may well be the best thing that has ever happened to her," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Universal Records, Winehouse’s record label, said it would do what it could to help her.
"We are deeply disappointed and upset by these latest revelations and are doing everything we can to offer Amy our full support in dealing with her problems," it said in a statement Tuesday.

The singer’s public demise amid allegations of drug use and lackluster musical performances have provided fodder for Britain’s notoriously scandal-hungry newspapers. Last month, the troubled singer, whose songs include "Rehab" and "You Know I’m No Good," was photographed walking outside her London home wearing a bra and jeans, with no shoes, looking upset.

Winehouse attracted yet more attention in court Friday when she blew Fielder-Civil kisses and shouted out, "I love you, handsome, gorgeous one," as he was led away after facing charges of assault and conspiracy. Fielder-Civil, 25, is accused of attacking a pub landlord and then later conspiring with him to withdraw as a witness at the trial. Fielder-Civil pleaded innocent to the charge of assault, and is expected to plead to a charge of perverting the course of justice next month.

Winehouse is nominated for six Grammys including best new artist and album of the year for "Back to Black," plus record and song of the year for the brassy hit "Rehab." The awards will be presented February 10 in Los Angeles.

Lindsay Lohan has checked into rehab, she said in a statement Wednesday. "I have made a proactive decision to take care of my personal health," she said. "I appreciate your well wishes and ask that you please respect my privacy at this time." A source close to the actress tells PEOPLE: "Lindsay is in a very positive frame of mind and is looking forward to making a positive change in her life."

Lohan, 20, has been filming the thriller I Know Who Killed Me, and a rep for the movie tells PEOPLE production had already been on hold due to Lohan’s recent appendix surgery. It’s uncertain when filming will resume. "I Know Who Killed Me, like all films, has insurance," says the rep. "In Lindsay’s case, she has a good 13-hour work day. The character she plays requires a good deal of physicality and she’s not yet healed (from her surgery) and not yet ready to return." In December, Lohan’s rep told PEOPLE the actress was attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Later that month, Lohan revealed that she had been in AA for a year, and said she feels better when she’s not drinking. "I was going out too much and I knew that, and I have more to live for than that," she told PEOPLE. But Lohan had previously dismissed critics who said she was going out too much. In November, she told Oprah Winfrey that she is not a party girl, adding, "Is it a crime to go dancing with your friends?" Over the summer, James G. Robinson, CEO of Morgan Creek Productions, blasted her for being absent from the set of her movie Georgia Rule and blamed her "heavy partying" for the behavior. Lohan’s mother Dina quickly shot back, saying Robinson was "way out of line." Lohan was briefly hospitalized at the time for being "overheated and dehydrated," according to her rep.

Britney Spears is seeking a less toxic lifestyle. Spears voluntarily checked herself into rehab on Monday, her manager, Larry Rudolph, confirmed to E! News. "We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of her family and friends at this time," Rudolph said. Despite Rudolph’s request, the paparazzi rapidly tracked Spears down at Malibu’s Promises treatment center, and photos of the rehabbing star taking a smoking break surfaced on the Internet Tuesday afternoon.

While he declined to offers specifics on Spears’ treatment, Rudolph told E! News‘ Ryan Seacrest exclusively that the 25-year-old singer was "doing great." He said that Spears was determined to make recovery her top priority, and that all she wanted was time to rest and get better. Spears’ decision to seek help comes after she briefly checked into a treatment facility in Antigua last week, but departed less than 24 hours later. On Friday, she returned to Los Angeles, where she took the drastic step of shaving her head and acquiring some new tattoos, before hitting the club circuit in a short, blond wig and sunglasses.

The self-inflicted makeunder capped off months of bizarre behavior from the former pop princess, who admitted in a posting to her Website last month that her recent actions had been "far from perfect." Spears kicked off her hard-partying regimen shortly after filing for divorce from Kevin Federline in November, an occasion she celebrated by hitting the town without her panties…repeatedly. In December, she celebrated New Year’s Eve by either nodding off (per Rudolph) or collapsing into a "dead faint" (per the New York Post) while on the clock as the host of a Las Vegas bash.

Even those closest to Spears were reportedly powerless to convince the fallen pop star to clean up her act. In an email to Hollywood.com’s That Other Blog last week, Spears’ former personal assistant Felicia Culotta wrote that she was "crushed/saddened/heart sick" about the singer’s downward spiral. "WE (as in her Family and nearest and dearest—ALL of whom are NOT on the payroll anymore!!) are doing EVERYTHING in our power to get help for Britney and all in our power to NOT pad the bottom or move the bottom, so when she does indeed hit rock bottom, she’ll stand up and walk away from this whole fiasco a new, confident, changed, career driven Britney like we all knew and loved," Culotta wrote. Just days later, that rock bottom moment came to pass, as the newly bald Spears finally accepted she needed professional help.