Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew - Season 3

Season 3

On April 22, 2009, it was announced on the Futon Critic that Celebrity Rehab had been renewed for a third season and a new spinoff titled Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew was being put into production. Sex Rehab premiered on November 1, 2009. Season 3 of Celebrity Rehab premiered on January 7, 2010.

Patient Heidi Fleiss was shown to be living in solitude in the wilderness of Nevada while caring for 25 parrots. Pinsky did brain scans of her which showed significant frontal lobe dysfunction, which Pinsky theorized was behind her inability to empathize with people, and her affinity for doing so with birds.

Actor Tom Sizemore had been approached to appear in Season 1, but declined. He met with Pinsky about appearing in the second season, sitting in Pinsky's office for two hours, as Pinsky tells it, "sweating and completely high on drugs, talking a million miles an hour, acting like he was going to do it then deciding he didn’t want to." He ultimately decided to appear in Season 3, but did not arrive in the season premiere with the others, forcing Pinsky's colleague Bob Forrest to seek him out. Pinsky adds in the season's fourth episode that he believes Sizemore's girlfriend is also a user, and their relationship is a threat to his sobriety. Pinsky points to Sizemore's story as emblematic of the difficulty of getting an addict to commit to rehab. Because of the tumultuous prior relationship between patients Sizemore and Fleiss, their consent to being cast together during the same season was obtained prior to filming.

Commenting on Dennis Rodman's detachment from the rehabilitation process, Pinsky said Rodman was "hyper-focused in some ways, and in others, completely blank", and observed that Rodman didn't comprehend what the other patients were experiencing, or how they perceived him. Pinsky concluded Rodman may have Asperger's syndrome, a diagnosis with which a colleague from UCLA Medical Center concurred.

Mackenzie Phillips had accomplished several months of sobriety before checking into the Pasadena Recovery Center.

Joey Kovar, who previously sought treatment for his addiction to cocaine and alcohol during his stint on 2008's The Real World: Hollywood, was spurred to return to rehab for his recurring addiction by the impending birth of his and his girlfriend Nikki's child.

Pinsky commented on Lisa D'Amato by saying, "I would classify her as an addict in denial. This is the only disease you have to convince people they have."

Following her ejection from Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, Kari Ann Peniche was allowed back to the Pasadena Recovery Center after she called Pinsky and asked for help. Pinsky, who explains in this season's fourth episode that treatment for drug addiction must take place before treatment for sex addiction, revealed that her aggressive behavior during Sex Rehab was derived from drugs she smuggled in a teddy bear, and which were difficult to detect during drug testing because of the medication Peniche took for attention deficit disorder. Irwin says her behavior had changed by her second appearance, though she did punch a camera man at one point.