Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crack Addicts’ on Max and Discovery+, A Shamelessly-Titled Chiropractic Medical Reality Show From The TLC Universe 

Crack Addicts arrives on Max via TLC, a migration that’s a thing now because of HBO and Discovery+ merging under the newly abbreviated banner to become WarnerMedia’s one stop shop for both legacy programming and casual viewing. Count Crack Addicts in the latter category. Tone deaf title aside, the medical reality show focuses on Florida-based chiropractor Dr. Alessandra Colon, who serves up bone adjustments and other treatments in her practice, often with an audible result that TLC’s sound editing department can’t seem to get enough of. So what’s cracking in the office today? Let’s find out… 

CRACK ADDICTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: After a few scene-setting exteriors of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, we join Dr. Alessandra Colon as the workday begins at Papa Chiropractic. “I love being a chiropractor for so many reasons,” Colon says in a cutaway interview. “I’m at the top of my game right now, and I have some really, really beautiful, complicated cases.” 

The Gist: “When most people think of chiropractors,” Colon continues, “they think I’m going to perform jiu-jitsu, kill them; people think I’m not a real doctor.” But if that stigma she references remains, it’s not a view held by the patients who travel to see Colon, sometimes even from out of state. As we soon learn, their stories have a similar theme. Chronic neck pain, chronic back pain – chronic all–over-the-damn-place pain that medical professionals from any number of disciplines haven’t been able to alleviate. And Colon, who says she sees up to 50 patients in a typical workday, is all about getting people to that moment of sudden, formerly unachievable bliss. “When you adjust somebody, and you just see their eyes like roll back into their head…alleluia, that’s a chiropractic adjustment.”

There’s a lot of stunting here for that big result. With sound and vision, Crack Addicts leans into montages that feature Colon’s laying of hands, her deft but wrenching motions, and the distinct thwack! of an adjustment at work, followed by the patient’s eye-widening realization of their pain dissolving in real time. “Manually moving a bone, or manipulating a bone,” Colon tells us, “when I use my hands to get that nice auditory sound we love, that cracking, that popping, that’s high force velocity.” But the doctor is also careful to differentiate that technique from its lower force counterpart, which she illustrates by using an activator tool on a patient with a condition called Diastrophic Dysplasia. 

Besides the big sound and fury payoff, a worthwhile feature of Addicts is the addition of onscreen definitions for chiro-specific medical jargon like Dysplasia, “hypertonic,” “nystagmus,” and “hypertonicity.” And Colon’s bedside manner is engaging for patients and viewers alike as she walks us through a given set of symptoms, puts them into context, and then describes her treatment plan. And when everything goes right, complete with that accompanying sound, “It’s like they just had a chiropractic orgasm in my office.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? TLC is a huge proponent of the “more where that came from” philosophy of programming – the original version of its hit 90 Day Fiance has spawned like a zillion spinoffs – and in that sense, Crack Addicts can be seen in a progression from the network’s medical-focused titles like Dr. Pimple Popper and My 600-lb Life. There are also parallels here to Botched, the long-running E! medical reality show where people come to Terry Dubrow to fix what other plastic surgeons couldn’t.    

Our Take: in the 1990s, before it ditched “The Learning Channel” in favor of brevity and embraced a new reality landscape of home improvement, wedding shows, and the like, TLC could be found to broadcast stuff like The Operation, which was exactly that. An overhead camera would reveal to the grazing cable television viewer the scene on an operating table, where everything from open heart surgery to liposuction occurred in all of its sometimes arresting glory. In Crack Addicts, the fixation on sound – that audible crack of a neck or back being adjusted – feels like a recall to that earlier era. It wants to showcase where the rush is, feed that revelation of a physical result like a dopamine drip for casual streaming, and the rest of Addicts – the lighthearted quality of Dr. Colon’s office environment, the brief patient interviews – is very much in service of those attention-grabbing moments.

That said, the use of explainers on screen and Colon’s ease with doctor speak – multisyllabic words straight out of a medical journal pepper her consults with colleagues, but always with a nod toward exposition for the audience – also gives Crack Addicts a bit of an educational flair, which does elevate it above the more broad and very familiar reality show formatting. That’s certainly another angle TLC is going for here, too. In highlighting and defining the various conditions and afflictions that bring patients to Dr. Colon’s door, Crack Addicts will ideally lasso a few viewers who will drop their remote and say “That’s me! That’s what I have! That exact same pain!”    

Sex and Skin: Crack Addicts is most concerned with what’s under the skin, and from shoulder groups and trigger points to intervertebral discs, its descriptions of treatments can often sound like reciting a road map of the human body. 

Parting Shot: There are initially three episodes of Crack Addicts available, and another montage full of audible cracks and necks moved seemingly violently teases all of the high force velocity to come.    

Sleeper Star: “It’s like a six-course meal for my neck and my back!” The plight of Liana, a 29-year-old Floridian who with arthritis and herniated discs in her neck has difficulty walking, illustrates how miraculous Dr. Colon’s treatments can seem. After the doctor’s adjustment, Liana can walk without a cane, and stops just short of dancing with joy right there in the office.

Most Pilot-y Line: Liana’s description of her pain journey feels like something we’ll hear more of on Crack Addicts, as Colon offers a destination for results. “After going through all the doctors that I’ve gone through, from a rheumatologist to a neurologist to cardiology and on and on and on, the only thing that made me feel better was actually seeing a chiropractor.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Crack Addicts falls right into line with TLC’s current programming slate, if that’s your kind of thing, packaging chronic pain and a chiropractor’s often very physical and very loud solutions for it inside generically familiar reality show formatting.   

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges