Mom: Lindsay Attending AA Meetings

Dina Lohan tells Ryan Seacrest that Lindsay has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but denying she's officially entered the program

By Gina Serpe Dec 01, 2006 5:58 PMTags

So much for anonymous.

Lindsay Lohan's mother, Dina, has told E! News' Ryan Seacrest that her daughter has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, though the elder Lohan stopped short of saying that the starlet has formally entered the program.

Dina Lohan made the comments to Seacrest on his KIIS-FM Los Angeles radio show Friday, adding that her 20-year-old daughter does not have a drinking problem per se, but is simply attending the meetings as many of her friends do and have found them beneficial.

"That is true," she replied, when asked if Lindsay was attending AA meetings. "You know, a lot of people she hangs out with go, and it's a positive thing. As a parent, you tell them what you can tell them, but she's 20 and I'm not gonna say, 'Stay home and don't go out,' that's a ridiculous thing to do.

"I'm there for support, and I'll obviously give her my opinion, but she's very smart." (For the full clip, check out The Vine.)

The mother of three has never publicly come out against her eldest daughter's nonstop partying and the bad press that results.

Over the summer, James G. Robinson, the producer of the Lindsay star vehicle Georgia Rule, issued a public letter to the actress, deriding her behavior on the movie set as that of a "spoiled child" and saying that her party-hearty ways were affecting production.

Dina quickly defended her daughter, saying Lindsay was a consummate professional who had to be taken to the hospital because of on-set conditions, not because of late nights, and calling Robinson's public scolding "ridiculous."

"I'm a mother and will do what I need to do to protect my child," she said at the time. "I don't feel it should be aired out and everyone should know. It's personal."

At least until now.

Reports of Lohan being active in the 12-step program first began circulating in November, when paparazzi photos of the Mean Girls star donning a red sobriety chip reading "90 Days" made the Internet rounds. The chips are typically distributed to AA members to commemorate different lengths of sobriety.

At the time, however, Lohan's rep told the New York Post that the chip was a tribute to one of the actress' friends, who had recently hit the alcohol-free benchmark.

On Friday morning, the tab's Page Six gossip column reported that Lohan had attended "several" AA meetings this week, only to be spotted partying at GQ's Men of the Year dinner Wednesday night.

For her part, the tabloid-hounded Lohan has long denied that her hard-partying ways were either out of control or even that hard.

During a recent stop at the Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Bobby, Lohan played down her bad publicity: "I'm 20 years old. Is it a crime to go...dancing with your friends? It's not. I have a life and I have my family and I have work and I have those three things."

Unfortunately, she also has the media.

Reporters and paparazzi have devoted much space to her nightclub rounds with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears over the past week. Her well-chronicled November misadventures also included another fender-bender and an on-stage tumble that knocked her out of hosting the World Music Awards in London.

While Lindsay's publicist has yet to comment on Dina Lohan's remarks, the rep is blasting the press for piling on the actress.

Leslie Sloane Zelnick has lashed out at media outlets for mocking Lohan's heartfelt—and obviously self-penned—letter of condolence issued in the wake of her Prairie Home Companion director Robert Altman's death last month.

Lohan wrote that she felt she "had the wind knocked of me" upon hearing of his death, adding that Altman "left us with a legend that all of us have the ability to do. So every day when you wake up. Look in the mirror and thank god for every second you have and cherish all moments."

She signed the letter, "BE ADEQUITE."

Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison, in an entry on the Huffington Post, deemed the letter "alarmingly incoherent" and claimed that Altman himself would have found its "sardonic potential."

The London Independent's Andrew Gumbel mused that she may have written the note "on one of her legendary party benders."

"Was the actress on a misguided—and utterly botched—quest for publicity, exploiting the death of a revered director for her own purposes?" Gumbel wrote.

Sloane Zelnick defended the prose and its intentions to Reuters. "She was completely shocked and blown away that he just died. It was written very quickly, and it was from the heart," the publicist said.

"She was devastated. She started crying. She quickly put something together on her BlackBerry. Here was a girl who found something special in this man that she felt so close to."