NOTICED: SOBRIETY COACHES

Pax Prentiss makes $2,500 (U.S.) a week hobnobbing with the rich and
famous. He sleeps with them, eats with them, reads their mail and flips
through their underwear drawers. His qualifications? For six years, he was
addicted to heroin and cocaine.

In the New Hollywood, where business and pleasure no longer mix, the latest
must-have for those who have too much of everything is a sobriety coach
paid to keep you on the straight and narrow.

For a sobriety coach, or "clean-living assistant", the workday is 24/7.
After a night camping out in the bedroom of a troubled star, mornings begin
with meditation or a motivational workout. Then, after a healthy,
presumably whole-grain breakfast, the coach accompanies the star to the
set, where he or she is a shadowy yet constant presence at the star's side
throughout the shooting day.

After all, how can rich and pampered celebrities, who have stylists to
dress them, personal trainers to work their abs, business managers to cut
them cheques and agents to get them dates with other rich and pampered
celebrities possibly be expected to be responsible for their own bad behaviour?

According to Fireman's Fund, which insures more than half the films shot in
the United States, as many as 20 per cent of productions are threatened by
stars or a director with drug or alcohol problems. Since shutting down the
set of a movie or television series because your lead is pie-eyed costs
hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, sobriety coaches are the new growth
industry.

On the set of Friends this season, Matthew Perry was accompanied at all
times by his sobriety coach, whose presence, according to People magazine,
"helped convince cast and crew that the star had his dependencies under
control."

Ben Affleck, who was allowed out of his Promises treatment in Malibu to
accept a Teen Choice award last August, brought along his sobriety coach as
his date. Bad boy Robert Downey has of course been through several sober
companions, on the sets of In Dreams and Wonder Boys, as a condition of his
probation.

And last week, actor Tom Arnold spoke to the New York Post about the hard
times of Brandon Davis, the troubled son of Beverley Hills billionaire
Marvin Davis, in his role as Davis's "sobriety coach." It's all become so
fashionable that even stars who are not struggling with addictions are said
to be considering the use of sober companions, so as not to miss out on the
latest hot personal accessory since the adopted Vietnamese baby.

Even after work, the star is accompanied to massage appointments and dinner
dates by the sobriety coach, who is part celebrity babysitter and part
vice-principal. The best at the job are reformed users.

"When I was using, I was really creative, so I know what to watch out for,"
says Prentiss, one of the founders of the new Passages treatment centre,
which treats six patients at a time in a 12,000-square-foot Malibu mansion
at a cost of +ACQ-39,500 per person per month.

"If I'm hired to watch somebody who is an alcoholic, I have to be with them
24 hours a day. I go through their house, their changeroom, all their
belongings."

Part of Prentiss's job is to play bad cop with everybody the star comes
into contact with. "Once I was hired to watch this guy and this gorgeous
girl who everybody assumed was his girlfriend showed up on the set. I
noticed she was handing him this bottle of Evian water," says Prentiss. "I
said, 'Wait a minute, I need to see that,' unscrewed the top and sure
enough, it was vodka. She wasn't a girlfriend. He was paying her to bring
him straight vodka in Evian bottles."

Cocaine is harder. "A gram of cocaine is only the size of your thumb," says
Prentiss. "It can be passed in a letter, or even a handshake. Sometimes you
have to be sort of rude." Prentiss checks toilet cisterns, frisks pockets,
peeks under the bun of the star's veggie-burger and flips through pages of
the script.

Even worse than paying a stranger to sniff my drinks or sleep in a cot in
the corner of my bedroom, would be the coaching part of the sober companion
relationship. But then, I almost killed the maternity nurse who tried to
"coach" me in the delivery room. According to Prentiss, real coaching steps
in once the star and the sober companion have bonded -- presumably a
natural by-product of the regime of room-sharing.

"It's really like a close friendship after a while,"says Prentiss. "It
becomes 75 per cent buddy and 25 per cent watchdog. But the thing is that
you can be there for them when it gets tough. Evenings come when the guy
you're hired to watch is feeling depressed or just had a fight with their
girlfriend and they really want to have a drink or get high. As a sobriety
coach you have to be there for them with support and guidance."

So what does Prentiss do with a celebrity who's down? "I really focus on
encouragement," says Prentiss. "I try to get them psyched about the movie,
give them a big ego boost."

No wonder everybody wants a sobriety coach. The secretly stoned Hollywood
chronicled by the late Julia Phillips in You'll Never Lunch in This Town
Again is over. Telling everybody you are a stoner and doing something about
it is what's in. Besides, as celebrity minders have known ever since the
days of Errol Flynn, the only thing big-name box office stars need more
than a big fix is a big, healthy ego.