The Truth Behind False Reports of Presley Gerber’s Death

I wasn’t surprised to read that Hayden Panettiere, 36, had reportedly spent time in a Malibu, California, drug rehabilitation clinic just weeks before she died from an overdose in a Greenville, South Carolina, loft.

Nor was I shocked by reports that Presley Gerber, 27—the handsome son of Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber—was found dead from a suspected overdose inside a luxury facility in Santa Monica.

These premature deaths are heartbreaking and horrifying. But surprising? Sadly, no.

American culture stopped treating drug rehabilitation as a serious matter years ago.

When Amy Winehouse sang, “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, no, no, no,” I knew we had a problem.

During my time at MTV in the 1990s, I encountered people battling addiction almost every week. Drugs and alcohol helped them silence the overwhelming noise of celebrity. Some survived; others did not.

Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain famously fled Exodus Recovery Center in Marina Del Rey, California, shortly before his suicide in 1994.

I will never forget the drummer from a popular 1990s band who, without my knowledge, injected heroin in my bathroom. On another occasion, I lent him $600 for rent—only to discover that he had spent the money on drugs. He later called me from rehab to apologize and ultimately turned his life around. I was never repaid.

Then there was the singer from one of my favorite bands, who borrowed $80 from me for a train ticket. I learned only later, when his embarrassed wife called after he entered rehab, that the ticket had cost $6. He is still alive today.

For people struggling with addiction, moving in and out of rehab had begun to resemble visits to a day spa. Seeking treatment for substance abuse had rarely seemed so casual.

Before the Betty Ford Center opened in the California desert in 1982, rehabilitation clinics were largely associated with street drinkers and housewives who secretly misused pills. They concealed what were considered shameful problems, while the stigma surrounding addiction made speaking openly about them nearly impossible.

That began to change during the 1990s, largely for the better. Mainstream artists started checking into facilities such as Promises in West Hollywood and were increasingly open about it. Admitting that your demons had overwhelmed your better instincts was no longer viewed as entirely disgraceful.

Yet rehab was also glamorized in a troubling way. It became associated with rebellious stars and cultural outsiders, rather than being recognized primarily as treatment for addiction.

By the 2000s, rehab had arguably become fashionable.

Winehouse released “Rehab” in 2006 and entered an actual rehabilitation program the following year. In 2008, the reality series “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” premiered, hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board-certified internist and addiction-medicine specialist.

Tabloids chronicled stars checking into high-end facilities which turned treatment into an upscale experience. 

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Private equity firms moved in, sensing an opportunity for profit and driving hundreds of reporting mergers. 

The substance abuse treatment market last year was valued at nearly $6 billion and projected to hit nearly $12 billion by 2033, according to analysis by Verified Market Research.

Today, there are reportedly 14,000 treatment centers in the US. Malibu is so riddled with luxury rehabs, you can’t swing Gavin Newsom’s mullet without hitting one.

None of this is to say that rehab is not effective or necessary for some people. But along with the destigmatization of addiction seemed to come a false belief that these clinics provided neatly packaged solutions for serious, potentially deadly, issues.

Addiction, of course, is far more insidious than that.

By all accounts, Gerber’s famous parents did everything they thought they should for their troubled son, but Dr Drew says a luxe rehab was not where, he believes, Gerber really needed to be.

‘I’m of the opinion someone like Presley Gerber should be in a psychiatric hospital, a full-service hospital with nurses, internists and psychiatrists,’ Dr Drew told TMZ.

The facility where Gerber died is a retrofitted $7.7 million, 7-bedroom mansion. A far cry from Alcoholic Anonymous meetings in church basements.

‘In term of the poshness of these facilities… they should not be spending their money on the environment,’ Dr Drew said of rehab facilities in general. ‘They should be spending their money on the care of the patients and the staff.’

There are no allegations of wrongdoing against any of the facilities that treated Gerber or Panettiere.

‘Whenever I see an elaborate facility or a facility that is making lots of money, I don’t trust it,’ Dr Drew continued. ‘To me, the treatment of drug addiction is not a good business… it requires so much human resources… so if people are making a lot of money of it, I’m already suspect.’

Even Gerber, according to a source who spoke to the Daily Mail, doubted that rehab was helping him. ‘He had been in rehab many times and didn’t like it,’ the source said. ‘He was very vocal about saying rehab does not work. He even said on his show that rehab had a 98 percent failure rate, so he was not a fan.’

Just nine months ago, Gerber posted a video, detailing the multiple drugs he was taking to treat his addiction and mental health struggles and confessed that he was struggling to keep track of them.

‘All these doctors say a lot of different things, so it’s kind of scary,’ he said in the clip.

That admission, said Dr Drew, should have triggered immediate ‘psychiatric hospitalization.’ 

Maybe it did, at the time.

So far there is no indication of foul play related to either Gerber or Panettiere’s deaths, but investigations are underway into how they obtained the drugs that ultimately killed them.

There is also no doubt that they should still be alive.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink how addicts interact with the rehab industry and how we can make treatment more than a very public stop on a deadly road to ruin.