Charlie Sheen's Stay-At-Home Rehab: Bad Idea?

(CBS) Three months after checking out of the New York City hotel suite he allegedly trashed in an alcohol-fueled rampage, Charlie Sheen has checked in to rehab.

But the 45-year-old bad-boy actor apparently hasn't jetted off to some gold-plated residential facility. Nor will the paparazzi be catching him on daily visits to a local addiction counselor. According to gossip site TMZ, Sheen will be rehabbing at his own home.

Stay-at-home rehab? Is that a good idea?

"It's not an approach that has been demonstrated by experience to be effective," Dr. Marc Galanter, director of the division of alcoholism and drug abuse at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City, tells CBS News. "That does not mean that it cannot work. But any treatment that does not have a body of experience behind it can't be assumed to be effective."

Galanter, who is not involved in Sheen's care, said there's strong evidence that addicts can gain sobriety via in-patient (residential) treatment, or regular visits to an addiction counselor.

If the decision to rehab at home represents questionable judgment by Sheen, it's not the only recent example. According to Fox News, porn star Kacey Jordan said in a recent interview that Sheen once asked her to baby-sit the daughters he had with ex-wife Denise Richards, who later tweeted, "No 'adult film star' will be babysitting our kids!"