After dealing with mounting criticism following the most recent cast member death, Dr. Drew Pinsky has decided not to do another season of Celebrity Rehab.
According to NBC News, Pinsky was on the Zack and the Gang radio show and confirmed that he there will not be another season of the show. It had featured Pinsky trying to help celebrities get over their addictions, but he’s decided to stop because he has had enough of being blamed every time a former cast member dies.
“I don't have plans to do that again,” he said. “I'm tired of taking all the heat. It's just ridiculous.”
He said that the show, which ran for five seasons, was “very stressful and very intense for me,” adding, “To have people questioning my motives and taking aim at me because people get sick and die because they have a life-threatening disease, and I take the blame? Rodney King has a heart attack and I take blame for that?"
“These are really sick people, that's why they die,” he said of the people who have appeared on the show. “These are people with life-threatening addiction. Bob [Forrest] and Shelly [Sprague] and I ran a program for 20 years and [for Celebrity Rehab] we do what we always do and just let them run the cameras.”
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, these comments come just after the suicide of country singer Mindy McCready in February. Rodney King died in June 2012 of an accidental drowning with cocaine in his system. The other former Celebrity Rehab cast members who have died include Jeff Conaway, Joey Kovar and Mike Starr.
Pinsky did call actor Tom Sizemore a success, noting, “We worked with him 10 years before [he came on the show]...Bob and I worked with him a lot and couldn't get him sober. And he got sober on Celebrity Rehab. That's awesome.”
The last season of Celebrity Rehab dropped the Celebrity element and aired in 2012.