Even 11 Years Sober, DJ AM Succumbed to Addiction
Sept. 1, 2009— -- Before he was found dead at the age of 36 from an apparent drug overdose, DJ AM was considered a model in the addiction recovery community.
In an interview at the end of July, DJ Am, whose real name was Adam Goldstein, claimed that he had been sober 11 years after kicking an addiction to crack cocaine, his "drug of choice."
In October, MTV had planned to debut his reality show, "Gone Too Far," in which he and concerned family members staged interventions for drug abusers.
The inspiration for the show, he told MTV in the interview, was "I'm a recovering drug addict."
"Something I've always done since the beginning of my sobriety is work with other addicts in recovery," he continued. "Other than DJ, that's kind of what I've always done. So now I'm doing the same thing just with a camera on."
Goldstein admitted that he experienced something of a flashback during the taping of his MTV show when he went into a New York bodega or convenience store and purchased a crack pipe to prove how easy it was to do.
"My palms were sweaty," he said during the interview. "I was like, 'Wait a minute, this is not smart for me to be holding this.' I started really kind of freaking out and having to kind of vent. And it kind of put that image back in my head."
Scott Basinger, an expert on addiction and recovery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said drug addiction can be so permanently ingrained or wired in addicts that even talking about their drug of choice will elicit the same reaction as actual using it.
"In the case of crack, the person will start to sweat, their pupils will dilate, their heart rate and breathing becomes more rapid…just like if they had smoked crack. It shows they are still very susceptible."
Since Goldstein's body was found Aug. 28 in his Manhattan apartment, along with a crack pipe and prescription pills, plans for his MTV show are in question, a spokeswoman at MTV told ABCNews.com.
