Reposted from, ugh, Facebook.
On Philip Seymour Hoffman, and What's Wrong With Us
I've had enough of this nonsense that addiction claims lives without any sense or whatever.
Yeah, it's obviously a tragedy that Philip Seymour Hoffman died with a needle in his arm. Any idiot his age with that much money should know that OxyContin is much safer than heroin, because at least you know you won't die from a hot dose, like River Phoenix, Mitch Hedberg, Bradley Nowell, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and that guy from Glee, to name at least a few incredibly rich and famous white performers (well, except for Jimi) who died from a drug that kills thousands of people that you would studiously not even look at if you saw them on the street, did. And yet that didn't stop a single one of them.
They usually smell awful, what with the sweat and gummy bear breath.
We would all love to blame PSH's death on drug addiction. It's so easy, and so head-shakingly simple. So sad, what a shame. We can all agree there's no easy solution, and then forget about it without any thought. Drugs, dead, drugs are bad, he's in the ground, done.
I find it curious that we, as a strangely Puritan society, are very careful to never ever talk about the reasons why anyone would want to take drugs in the first place. As if when we gave voice to why one of the greatest character actors of our generation died with a needle in his arm, we might have to graze uncomfortably close along the fresh wounds of the emotionally abusive nature of our culture, and the incomprehensibly weighty burdens of fame.
One doesn't have to be famous to feel that kind of pressure. In fact, we live in a world where more and more people are expected to live with that kind of pressure every day -- and if you can't live with it, well then you're fired, and if you lose your job then you will be homeless in a month or two, to say nothing of what will happen to your family or the people you care about, and that's all before you have to start lying to keep up appearances so nobody knows you're functionally homeless and about a week away from being forever excluded from any kind of life that an American would recognize, much less a rich Hollywood one.
We've built a world where unless your family is going to be wealthy forever, you're constantly dangling over a precipice that will not kill you, but make your life harder and more miserable than anyone in your family would care to admit. All the families that had the money before are circling the wagons, and the wagons are made of money, and you are neither allowed to pick the money off nor ride in the wagon.
We've built industries that are happy to sing when you're winning, and then disappear you after the first time you lose. Hollywood is a lot like that. Technology is a lot like that. Journalism is a lot like that. Lawyering is a lot like that. In fact, thanks to the families that are going to be wealthy forever, and the billion-dollar media empires they've consolidated, we've all internalized a culture where everything is a lot like that; either you shut up and do your job despite everything in your life pressing down on you like an enormous concrete block, or you're fired, and then how are you gonna pay the mortgage? Oh, your neighbor lost his house and his wife, and his four kids are relying on six months of public assistance that won't come in for at least six weeks? He must not have been working hard enough.
How dare someone self-medicate? How sad it must be to have nothing left but a chemical to save your sanity, say a bunch of people who gladly abuse prescriptions for Xanax, Adderall, Paxil, and Viagra. How shameful that someone would use a street drug that might kill them, say people who take Chantix and Lipitor. Addiciton is such an awful shame.
How many people have to die doing the same thing in response to the same pressure before anyone stops shaking their head and clucking their tongue and being sad to actually stop and think about why it keeps happening? Andy Dick was beaten up by a slightly less effeminate man after it was revealed that he sold Phil Hartman's wife the drugs that sent her on such an unstable episode that she killed one of the greatest character and voice actors of the mid-1990s. But who cares, right? Addiction is a harsh master/mistress, and can take anyone's life.
Bullshit. It's not the drugs that are destroying us; after all, we're sold the same drugs under "safe" labels, along with some really strange drugs that are much less safe, and we have all been trained to leave all that shit alone, as long as it's "medicine." Chantix, a drug that leads to hallucinations, psychotic thoughts and actions, and behavior that will literally lead you into a mental institution (unless you say you've been taking Chantix, in which case, oh yeah, those side effects are tough LOL), is neither criminal nor culturally discriminated against. Heroin, though, is the perfect opportunity for guilty liberals to bow their heads and cynical jerks to point fingers and run their mouths.
It never had anything to do with the drug. It was the culture that poisoned them. Our most feeling people, some of our most talented comics and musicians and actors, are all feeling so much and are so disconnected from what passes for culture that they feel like they have to take a drug that (to be fair) feels better than anything the economy of fame has to offer, and also makes you really really sick when you try to stop. Even if someone were to stop riding the white horse, though, they'd still have to wake up as a famous person (or a not-famous person in a different struggle) in what is a morally and ethically bankrupt culture. As soon as you see the rampant cynicism and hypocrisy we all just take for granted every day, ESPECIALLY if you're a creative type who is sensitive to feeling that sharp glassy edge of life, you can't just stupidly accept it and go get your Starbucks and sit in traffic for 90 minutes because someone took too long to merge and caused an accident in the middle of a six-lane highway. You're just too goddamn sensitive.
That's what's "wrong" with us. By "us," I mean those who would choose self-medication over some kind of weird, anti-Buddhist slow acceptance of the pointless and amoral consumer culture. We wanted a different way, a way where we could feel things on our own terms, and have some kind of power over the inside of our heads. It's easy to blame us for finding it in that space between our thumb and the flat edge of the plunger on a syringe, but it's hard to think about why anyone would do anything that way.
Unless, of course, you were accustomed to feeling things strongly and disagreeing with objects and sensations that were specifically marketed to appeal to your demographic. Then it might make perfect sense, and it might just make you more upset at the economic engine that chews up and swallows our most interesting thinking and feeling humans for the sake of selling more Zoloft and another Transformers movie.By the way, make sure you see the last Hunger Games movie: I hear they'll have to make a REALLY EXCITING casting choice! (Make sure you didn't take a double dose of Lexapro or smoke any cannabis before you do; Jesus might cry, and your parents might call the police.)
Posts
