Premieres Monday, Ocober 12th at 10 p.m.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20311439,00.html

this should be interesting.

It was sad to watch this and think of what happened to him after he was trying to help other addicts be better. I wonder how anyone who was helped by him has handled his death, as in going back to drugs or seeing what happened to him and staying off drugs.

I thought this was pretty good. I liked seeing some of what happens after a person enters rehab. Wish we could see more! Adam is very handsome and seemed very genuine. I know this has been edited as a documentary with a focus on Adam it may not have had if he was still alive, but at points I felt it was too Adam-focused.

Next week looks intense. Her arms are so scary!

Oh man, that was so intense. Not so much Amy, she was an addict like any other addict we've all seen on Intervention, but knowing that for all his good intentions, Adam couldn't make it himself.

The only thing I ever knew of Adam was when he was engaged to Nicole Ritchie. I never knew what a kind, compassionate, giving person he seemed to be. Does anyone know the timeline of when the show was shot and when he died? I wonder if helping all those addicts brought up too many bad feelings that he didn't feel he could express.

So sad. I really liked him from this episode.

IMO, I think it's pretty clear from watching this episode why his family decided to let it air. I knew nothing of DJ AM other than that he was a DJ, engaged to Nicole Ritchie & that he was in the plane crash with Travis Barker. Watching the show is breaking my heart because he was SO kind, warm, compassionate, soft spoken, sweet & a plethora of other positive attributes. It's really sad to think of how much he helped others only to succumb to it himself (even with the official cause of death being accidental). It's a little difficult for me to focus on the addict because they do show a lot of Adam & because it's my first real exposure to him, I'm drawn to that. I'm sure that will change as the series moves on though.

While it may be morbid, I hope the addicts who he helped during this series see what happened to him in the end & that it helps them stay on the right path.

Hmm. I posted last night but I guess it got eaten.

I didn't know DJ AM was from Philly. That's my hometown. I always like seeing it on TV. And if I didn't recognize the city, I would recognize the accents. Whoo, that family was dripping with them. Mercifully, I was spared.


I agree. He seemed like a real sweetheart. He was so polite on the show, and he really seemed to care about and be invested in what he was doing. The "Don't Pawn Me" iPod was really funny. I also didn't know his father was an addict who died of AIDS. That's so sad. It seems like he had a lot to overcome, and he was doing so well for so long, and just couldn't hold on. SO sad. I hope he has peace wherever he is.


It seems pretty recent, within a few months. At least with Amy, she spoke about him seven weeks after he visited her in rehab, and it seems like he visited her halfway through.

I got a little teary as I was watching this, knowing he succumbed to something he was encouraging others to beat. I also get teary thinking about what his family must be going through, losing him. I think he did a great thing for these people on the show. I'm looking forward to next week's episode.

As a regular Intervention fan, I was really curious to see how this show would differ from that in terms of structure. Turns out, structure is very similar, but Adam personally makes the difference. As the PP said, his educated and well expressed views and empathy for the addicts is almost overwhelming to see, even before you add his subsequent death. My father was a Philly drug addict who OD'd, so this whole episode hit me hard. It felt more personal then the A&E style, less structured, or more organic. I agree, the focus and interest for me in the show was not the addict of the week (who I am glad to see turned her life around, good for her!) but Adam. I'll be tuning it for the future episodes, and I hope there is a concluding episode addressing Adam's life, struggles, and death for the sake of closure, but I understand it may be too soon for his family.

I was coming here to say I caught this in repeat last night. I echo your sentiment, Penthilisea - this was a more organic, intimate, and deeper version of what Intervention tries to do. I felt it was more realistic, on so many levels. For example, the mother showing Adam the photos instead of a packaged montage. Also, the view of Amy using heroin through the peephole rather than via a cameraman in her face. I thought it was a much truer picture of her addictive behavior than of some of what I've seen on Intervention or drug-related episodes of True Life. And as someone who lived with a heroin addict for two years before he went to jail (and I left him), I thought it was an incredible portrayl. Kudos.

In some ways I liked this more than Intervention, because of Adam. Even though there was an interventionist in the room, she didn't go visit the family or the addict beforehand, and she didn't get to know Amy on a personal level and talk to her about her own experiences. On Intervention the addict can complain that the interventionist is there because it's his/her job, but Adam was obviously here to help because he cared, not because he had to be there. I think it's easier to hear how much of a mess you are from a person who's been there and who's seen firsthand where you are from both you and your family. I agree with the posters who said this was more intimate than Intervention - that's exactly the right word for it.

Adam was such a great listener, and I think that's what Amy and her family needed. They needed to talk to someone who would be able to help them. I hate so much that he's gone because he could have helped so many people like this. I hope the show reaches people and helps them. I'm glad it's being aired, because at this point it's not about Adam as much as it's about the people he helped and the people who could be helped by seeing this show. Adam wouldn't have made the show if he didn't want to help people, and I think if MTV had pulled the show because of his death, it would be a waste. It may sound dramatic, but this is his legacy.

I too like this better than INTERVENTION. I have seen more than my fair share of addiction documentaries and this one was my fave. One of the reasons is because Adam is/was struggling with his own demons of addiction. He truly understood the physical and emotional pain an addict goes through as well as the loved ones. Adam was truly sincere and wasn't just hosting this series. Seeing Amy behind a wheel of a car, injecting herself with heroin, really really made me gasp at the thought of her on the road. I began to think how many other people I share the road with are under the influence of drugs and how many have just shot themselves up right before driving.

I loved seeing Amy getting her teeth fixed. So many addicts have problems with their teeth but I have never seen a documentary that ever focused on that aspect of the addict's health. I also liked seeing Adam being there for Amy throughout the various stages of her rehab. I also agreed with Amy when she said she thought Adam was cute. Yes he was.

With the benefit of hindsight, I have to wonder whether it was a relapse trigger for Adam to be around all these currently-using addicts, watching films of them shooting up, etc. You have to be rock solid in your sobriety before you can risk it with that kind of work. Maybe Adam's generosity and empathy led him to take on work he wasn't ready for. I guess we'll never know.

I think Adam's relapse began after the plane crash. Surely the pain he endured from the injuries, burns and subsequent plastic surgery were unbearable.

I also think there was an element of survivor guilt - I think he and Travis Barker were the only ones to survive the crash, and I've read that that was hard for both of them to deal with, the "why them and not me?" Adam seems like a sensitive guy, so I'd imagine he felt that pretty deeply.

But the plane crash was a year ago, long before this series was shot. Was he doing this kind of intervention while using? That's pretty horrible to contemplate.

I don't know IVYSPICE. It is just my speculation. I do know how much burn injuries hurt and since he had third degree burns, Adam surely was in intense pain.

The toxicology report showed Adam had in his system cocaine, OxyContin, Hydrocodone or Vicodin, antianxiety drugs Xanax and Ativan, Klonopin which also controls anger, Benadryl, and Levamisole, a drug apparently used to cut cocaine.

I am leaning towards Adam using everything listed above per a doctor's prescription and the cocaine was obviously his own doing. But why he resorted to using cocaine, I can't say. Was that his drug of choice when he was an addict?

Whether he was using cocaine at the time of the taping, I don't know if anyone will ever know.
I am curious as well as to when this show began taping. I realize at the end of the first episode it stated something about "seven weeks."

IvySpice, that's a great conjecture. I guess we'll never know, but I can't imagine that a recovered drug addict could as easily be around drugs as the rest of us...and not want to use them, at least on some level.

I really hope Adam wasn't using at the same time he was running the interventions, but something tells me he was not hypocritical. Then again, drugs are powerful and maybe he could have been hiding his relapse from the world. I hope he wasn't in too much emotional pain, as he seemed like such a genuinely great guy.

Finally caught this.

Like other posters, this was a nice alternative to A&E's Intervention, for two reasons: the highly personal involvement of Adam, and the more in-depth look at what happens in rehab. Intervention shows so little of that, so it was pretty amazing to be able to get glimpses of what the addict's experiences are during the time period A&E sums up as a BSOJ that reads, "Thee Months Later." (That's always reminded me of a cartoon -- possibly from "The Far Side" -- in which a scientist has laid out a complex process on a blackboard in which all of the steps are crammed with detailed formulas and notations except step 2, which simple states, "Somewhere is here, a miracle occurs". But I digress.)

I'd never heard of Adam prior to this series and his untimely death. From what I've seen, he was a very compassionate, caring man, and Empress1 nailed it with theory that he was plagued by survivor guilt after the plane crash. Given his obvious emotional investment in the addicts featured in the show, I can easily picture Adam struggling heavily with the emotional implications that come from trying to figure out why he survived when his friends did not.

I also agree with Malibu65 that the majority of the meds in his system at the time of death were physician prescribed. However, by this point in time, and based on what I've seen of him, I strongly suspect that he was probably abusing many of them in an attempt to deal with emotional, rather than physical, pain.

As to why the cocaine, one of the main side effects of all of the prescriptions drugs and the Benadryl is sedation. I'd bet dollars to donuts that he was using the cocaine to counteract the effects he had to be feeling from taking so many downers.

NY Times article about the show. Says the show was filmed last spring and summer. The author wonders if Adam's participation in the show has anything to do with his relapse. It also says that the show grew out of outreach work he was already doing, which I didn't know.

Very insightful article / bio about Adam's life & struggles with drugs, written by a friend of his.

DJ AM: Scenes From A Life

The end of it, particularly the section labeled "The Final Countdown", offers a bit of insight into whether or not the show could have been a trigger for a relapse, and how the post-crash anxiety drugs were probably a gateway. It details some of his thinking & his confessions about being tempted by drugs & planning to relapse. REALLY haunting stuff.

Thank you both for posting these articles. DJ AM's story has affected me and hopefully it inspires some people with drug problems to really give getting clean a chance.

Like a few posters here, I only knew Adam from the media stories. I was amazed at how sweet, kind, compassionate he was.



Thing is, when you start taking narcotics for pain - and without a doubt he had blinding pain from the plane crash, and they have to have the narcotics because the pain from something like that is something your body can't sustain without relief - soon the narcotics work on you to where you think your physical pain becomes emotional pain before you can blink an eye.

God rest his soul - I'm glad his family decided to let this air.

Did anyone see the new episode with Gina? I missed the last 15 minutes after she agreed to go to rehab. I wished they had given more background, because it seemed like something was missing there. The brother said that he had been through the same addiction in the past. Sooo...what's going on in that family that they managed to produce two heroin addicts? I don't regularly watch Intervention, but I like that they explore the person's history so you can usually connect the dots of what went wrong that led to their bad state.

I was totally shocked when during the pre-intervention meeting with Adam and the mother/grandmother/brother, the mother expressed a "just let her die" attitude about Gina's drug use. The mother also seemed emotionless in reading Gina her letter. Scary. Maybe that lack of maternal love is some of the source of Gina's drug use.

Wow. Gina's mom being so blase about her daughter dying from a heroin overdose: "She won't be in pain, and she'll be gone." Her own child! I guess one way to spin that remark is that as a survival technique, Gina's mom forced herself to write her daughter off because a tragic outcome seemed all too likely. But still...that was STONE COLD.

I liked what Adam said about recovery being for people who want it, and expensive rehab is wasted on some folks. Hell yes. I hope Gina sticks with recovery this time around. "I felt like smoking some dust!" Well, DUH, you're an addict, you're going to feel that way. The question is what you decide to do about it. I wish the end of the film had shown Gina's mother, who had let her back in the house wasted, after leaving treatment early. It's called a bottom line, mom! Jeez. She's sure acting like she doesn't care if Gina lives or dies.

My thoughts exactly. I was wondering if there were more family members who were addicts? My first red flag was the brother who used heroin and then the second red flag was the grandmother GIVING Gina money for heroin! If family members are enabling her addiction, then I'm pretty certain there are other addicts in her family, and it's a much bigger issue that needs to be addressed.

I too wonder if the show made him relapse. being around addicts, talking about their addiction, watching videos with them using drugs, I wonder if it finally broke down his resolve. I read somewhere that before the show, he had not even allowed himself to touch a pipe in like 9 years or something. I guess we will never know. RIP Adam. I keep missing the show, when does it air.

Monday nights at 10 PM.

I had a fleeting thought that Gina's mother might be an addict, by the way she was so blase about the whole thing.

Anyone know why there wasn't a new episode last night?

According to MTV's website, the next episode will be airing Thursday at 11pm EST. Not sure if this is the show's new permanent time slot or if it's just for this week.

Tonight is the new episode. It deals with a 20 year old addicted to heroin and cocaine.

Did anyone catch the episode last night with Chris? I thought for sure he wasn't going to continue with the program. Seeing Adam getting so pissed at him for wanting to leave the program was hard to watch. It reminded me of what Adam must have endured and done to his own family with his own addiction.