While on Celebrity Rehab, she stated that she would leave the porn industry and straighten out her life because of her mother, who was hospitalized in Florida after jumping off a four-story building as a suicide attempt the previous month.

[8] In the reunion episode of the show taped approximately six months after leaving rehab, she claimed she had not made an adult movie since becoming sober and intends to never make another one.

In an interview with AVN magazine, Carey stated that she had entered rehab to tackle an addiction to Xanax, which she developed around the time she dropped out of her second run for governor[9] and that the focus on alcohol was created by the show.

[11] In 2011, Carey was interviewed for Celebrity Rehab Revisited stating that, following the end of the show, she had quit Xanax and binge drinking, apart from occasional champagne.

She ran on an eleven-point platform that included somewhat tongue-in-cheek promises of taxing breast implants, making lap dances tax-deductible, and creating a "Porn for Pistols" exchange program.

[15][16] In April 2005, Carey was arrested in connection with a Lakewood, Washington, cabaret sting operation, for violating a city strip club ordinance that forbids dancers from sexually touching themselves.