“For every self-destructive Hollywood star who has died a sad, unexpected, early death due to drugs and alcohol, there are hundreds of other celebrities who carry on with their dysfunctional, conflict-ridden lives,” says Stephen Della Valle, author of the new book Rising Above the Influence and president of the board at Turning Point rehabilitation center.
“The media has turned celebrity alcohol and drug addiction into entertainment, a spectacle, rather than focusing on the life-and-death aspects of this serious disease,” he notes.
Mr. Della Valle is all too familiar with the lifestyle so many celebrities expose themselves to on a daily basis. After twenty-plus years of drug use and alcoholism, he finally made his way into a recovery program that succeeded in helping him overcome his addiction issues—but it took losing his job, his family and himself to get him to that point.
“People need to recognize the severity of this disease,” he says. “Hollywood is continuing to depict drug and alcohol use as ‘cool,’ and it’s quickly becoming a nationwide epidemic. With addiction, there are only three possible end results—rehab, jail or death.”
Mr. Della Valle considers himself one of the lucky ones. In Rising Above the Influence, he candidly recounts his indoctrination into the world of substance abuse as a young teenager and the desperate, sometimes morbidly comical situations he endured to support his heavy addictions to heroin, prescription drugs, cocaine and alcohol.
“I did a lot of things I’m not proud of,” he says now. “There is nothing cool or admirable about being an addict, no matter how much the media tries to make it look that way.”
Stephen Della Valle is president of the board of directors at Turning Point rehabilitation center in Verona, New Jersey. Currently celebrating twenty years of sobriety, he lives in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, with his wife, Donna. He has three children.
Rising Above the Influence is available now (ISBN: 0-9801776-0-
