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This lure is particularly strong for "people who have had sobriety problems before," says Richard Rogg, founder and owner of the fashionable Promises Malibu--a rehab clinic where the high-profile addict can try to kick the habit. "He'll have an operation, and the doctor will give out Vicodin like they're M&M's. Soon, he's addicted. I'm hearing the same old story: 'I had five or 10 years' sobriety, but I got loaded on Vicodin, and I went out.'"
Not everyone who uses painkillers for more than a few weeks at a time will become an addict, says Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He suspects that most of those abusing Vicodin obtained the drug illegally. Says Leshner: "It's important to separate when the substance is a medicine and when it is abused." Just ask Eminem, who in Under the Influence declares, "I'm like a mummy at night/fightin' with bright lightning/frightened with five little white Vicodin pills bitin' him."
--Reported by Alice Park/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles