[quote name='dcfox']The show is slowly losing its appeal. I think a large part of it is because of how they've been portraying his addiction problem. In the story arc with the cop, before they kinda danced around the issue of his addiction, but this arc brought it up in a big way and not exactly a flattering way either. The guy lies about going into rehab, steals medicine off of dead people, overdoes, almost amputated a child and gets his boss to commit perjury for him and next episode everything is hunky dory. Few episodes later, fakes having cancer just for the sake of getting high.[/quote]
I think that he may have actually been trying rehab, up until the point where he realized that the cop was an asshole and didn't care that he was in rehab. I believe at that point is when he decided it didn't matter and got back on the drugs.
Reason I think this is because of all of the symptoms he was portraying of detoxing before the interaction with the cop in rehab. Of course he could have faked symptoms, but IIRC they were showing symptoms when he wasn't around anyone else. Don't know, just a thought.
I agree though that the drug addiction is a very dark part of this comedy that everyone seems to overlook. Perhaps the writers are trying to send a message about drug use to society. Either about how drug addiction can affect anyone, or how people can still function whilst being addicted.
I like the irony of how if House were his own patient, he would have screamed at himself numerous times about how he shouldn't get better because he's not doing his physical therapy and drug rehab.