Rachel Pollack knows about the celebrity life.
After all, she is the daughter of famed movie director Sidney Pollack.
She also knows a thing or two about celebrity and prescription drug abuse. After all, by her own admission, five years of abusing a rainbow of prescription drugs nearly killed her.
And those two experiences make her uniquely qualified to talk about the kind of drug abuse and doctor shopping that killed teen idol Corey Haim.
"It's easy," said Pollack, "Anyone can do it."
Pollack said Haim's alleged habit sounds like a textbook case. She said she easily got nearly 200 pills every three days.
Attorney General Jerry Brown said Haim was able to get prescriptions for more than 500 pills in the days leading up to his death.
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Pollack tolds NBCLA "doctor shopping," going to several doctors to get prescriptions from each one, is rampant.
The doctors likely never suspect anything.
"They don't know each other. They don't talk to each other."
And being a celebrity only makes it easier. She said doctors "like to please celebrities," so it was likely the physicians happily wrote the prescriptions, never asking any questions.
State investigators said celebrity status might make drug abuse easier, but by no means is it confined to Hollywood. Sara Simpson of the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement said the problems stretch from actors to police officers, attorneys, doctors, nurses, bus drivers, and construction workers.
And Pollack said she sees those faces every day. She runs a sober-living home in Marina Del Rey, where she deals with those fighting hard to kick the addiction that most likely played a key role in the death of Corey Haim.
