Today, roughly sixteen-hundred Americans will check themselves into some type of rehabilitation facility to treat a substance abuse problem. Now, I have no idea if that's the actual number, or even how one would go about obtaining such a statistic, so I'm just going by what I see on TV and on the internet and extrapolating it to apply to the general population.

This is not going to be some type of puritanical rant railing against where we are headed as a society or anything like that. In fact, I would like to make it perfectly clear that SandJ does not now, nor has it ever had, a plan to adopt any sort of anti-substance abuse agenda. This column was precipitated by a recent conversation with an acquaintance I had not seen in roughly fifteen years. Given the circumstances, we were doing some pretty broad-stroke catching up and he inquired as to the well-being of one of my good friends whom he had met many, many years ago. I informed him that the friend in question was doing fine and in fact had recently completed a second stint in rehab, leading me to believe that he must be doing extremely well at the moment. The response: "Yeah, rehab. One of the guys in my fraternity went into rehab while he was pledging and we inducted him at the clinic." "Really?" I asked. "This kid was nineteen and pledging a fraternity and felt the need to seek help for alcohol abuse? Are you sure he was ever completely habilitated in the first place?" Unless this guy was a young William Burroughs, my guess is that he may have jumped the gun on that call.

I use this example primarily to illustrate how far the rehab phenomenon has come during the past quarter century. I'll call the dawn of the rehab culture 1982; primarily because that was the year the Betty Ford Clinic opened its doors. I can remember hearing about celebrities going there to battle their alcohol problems (it never seemed to be drugs in those days), but the names you heard belonged to well-known boozers, and even then, the whole process was hush-hush enough that the word didn't get out until after they had. Fast forward to 2008 when, if you're a teenage starlet and haven't done a rehab bid, they'll put it in the title of your profile in Vanity Fair. We all know who has gone, how long they were there and (after a few weeks) how well it worked. The only piece of information which continues to be obfuscated is the precise affliction for which they were being treated. Most of the time, the catch-all ailment "exhaustion" is cited as the cause for the visit, which always reminds me of the scene in the Wes Anderson classic Bottle Rocket when Anthony (played by Luke Wilson) tries to explain to his twelve year-old sister why he "went away" to the desert:

Anthony: You told, you told your friend Bernice I'm some kind of jet pilot?
Grace: What was I supposed to say, they stuck you in an insane asylum?
Anthony: It wasn't an insane asylum, Grace. I explained to you back then that it was for exhaustion.
Grace: Exhaustion?
Anthony: Yes, exhaustion.
Grace: You haven't worked a day in your life. How could you be exhausted?

I mean, is there a new meaning for the word exhaustion now? I'm pretty sure that I'm always exhausted. Although the type of exhaustion I feel is generally a byproduct of raising a family, working a fairly demanding full-time job and trying to maintain a couple of meager writing side-projects. I don't think that's the type of exhaustion that would entitle me to call my wife on a Friday evening from work and say "Hon, don't wait up for me. I won't be home tonight. It's been a rough week and I'm exhausted, so I'm headed to rehab straight from work." Besides, didn't they come up with a cure for exhaustion already? Oh yeah, it's called "sleep".

It is not my intention to come off as someone who is unable to comprehend why people develop drug and alcohol habits and I'm certainly not saying that they should be ostracized for seeking help, but hasn't it all become a little too casual? I mean, I know why people do drugs - it's because they make you feel incredible. If they made you feel shitty, they would be called something else and one would assume that they would be avoided as a matter of course. The same goes for booze. There's very strong evidence that alcohol was actually discovered by apes and elephants, which would get wasted by eating fermented fruit. In light of that evidence, what chance did Lindsay Lohan reasonably stand? Unfortunately, some drugs and, well, all alcohol can become physically addictive. Note that I say "some" here. Rather than get into the underlying physiological science regarding why you can't get addicted to marijuana, I'll defer to this clip from the movie Half Baked.

So, you ask, if one is not technically an addict, then why go to a clinic? Why not just stay home and take it easy for a few weeks? The reason that non-addicts go to rehab is simply a lack of self-restraint. If they don't have some type of authority figure telling them that they can't go out, they will. It's pretty understandable when you think about it, especially in Hollywood. When I was in college, it made me nervous to stay in rather than hitting the bars because I was afraid I might miss a great night. When you apply this logic to Hollywood, and factor in that there will be thousands of pictures taken documenting the fact that it was, indeed, a great night; okay, I get it.

Remember though, amongst those "exhaustion" cases are a few bona-fide addicts and alcoholics, so you need to be careful with how you address the issue. There is a huge difference between a genuine junkie and someone simply suffering from an acute lack of self-restraint. SandJ once spent the night in the lock-up of a large city's worst district and got to hear a guy going through withdrawal for several hours. It sounds funny, but it made us feel both worse and better about our raging prison hangover all at the same time. If more definitive proof of the axiom "it could always be worse" exists, we've never heard it.

If you don't know SandJ well enough by now to understand that we would never point out a problem like this without offering a solution, you'll learn. In the meantime, our plan:

Sportsandjokes.com proposes that we open up our own rehab clinic. It will not be called "Promises in Malibu" or "Cirque Lodge in Utah"; no it will be known as "Restraint in Jersey City". Check-in is restricted to one day per month. The new crop is housed in one room for two days in order to separate the addicts from the rest of the crowd. After the two days, anyone banging their head against the wall or tearing their hair out will be hustled into a medically assisted withdrawal facility on premises. The remainder would be forced to attend daily Tony Robbins-style organizational seminars. Calendars would be handed out and marked as follows: Circle any day during the next month which requires you to be lucid and not-hung-over - place a big black "X" through the prior day - no getting fucked up on the "X" days, get it? Now circle any days which require drinking and the like, in green (trips to Vegas, bachelor parties, wedding receptions, etc.). Those are the days that they can do their thing. If they have a light schedule, let them throw in a couple of "free greens". Think of the joy generated simply by looking at your calendar and realizing that you're supposed to grog the next day. Fantastic.

It would be irresponsible for us to ignore the inevitable situations where an "X" day falls in a green circle. Not to worry, we've got you covered. The first thing you need to do is commit to booze. No extracurriculars, they can't be regulated under this program. So deal with it and follow these rules:

• Consult a body weight/alcohol metabolism chart - this will let you know how many drinks you can have in an hour before you're completely shitfaced. Give yourself a little cushion though. We're sure your tolerance is pretty high, and after all, you don't want to be completely sober
• Take a glance at the clock every time you get a drink and make a mental note as to when you should be getting another. Stick as closely as you can
• You're probably used to drinking fast, so you need to take steps to ensure that you're not completely reliant on the time factor - if you're drinking beer, order a half Hoegaarden/half OJ (a Hoe-Juice, if the bartender is savvy). In addition to being delicious they contain half the beer that you would normally be swilling. If you're more of a Jack and Coke person, try the old "just Coke" once in a while - same effect.

Always remember that these rules are only in effect if you really shouldn't be drinking in the first place, so any ridicule you might receive is completely unwarranted. If anyone catches you drinking a Coke and seems to think that it's funny, just remind them that you're struggling with a personal problem and counting on their support and understanding. Or, just throw the Coke in their face - those things are usually free if you tell the bartender that you're a designated driver or something.