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The Addict Still Has a Responsibility

Mötley Crüe and Sixx AM bassist Nikki Sixx has always been a hero of mine, largely because of the raw honesty he displays when writing about his addictions. Yesterday on his radio show, he discussed the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Mood music:

The hardest thing for Sixx to swallow is that Hoffman was clean and sober for more than 20 years before he relapsed. Sixx has been sober since 2001. Before that, he had slipped on drugs several times after having been clean for a few years.

I’m sure it also wasn’t easy to hear that Hoffman died with a needle still in his arm. Sixx was fortunate enough to wake up with the needle in his arm in 1987, when he finally decided he couldn’t take it anymore.

Indeed, Hoffman’s death has generated a lot of discussion. Yesterday I wrote about how addiction was a disease that many people don’t understand.

Yet I don’t believe addicts should be blithely excused for every failure because they have this monkey on their back.

Actions have consequences. Hoffman leaves behind three kids who needed him and an army of people who were heavily invested in him. People have a right to be angry about that.

Sometimes we’re so beaten down that we’re no longer in our right mind. That’s when we make sorry, costly choices. And as anyone who has cleaned up after addiction knows, the only right path is the one where personal responsibility is everything.

Addicts shouldn’t get a free pass. It’s quite the opposite, really. If you can’t be real with yourself about your demons, you’re doomed to make bad choices, including the deadly ones. 

But as I said yesterday, we also need to understand that this is a battle. No matter how strong you are, it only takes a second to let your guard down. That’s when the fatal bullet hits you between the eyes.

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Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Disease of Choice

Some say actor-director Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t deserve sympathy. He didn’t have cancer or other diseases people get without choice. He died because he chose to shoot up.

It’s the kind of statement you get from folks who have been fortunate not to have suffered from addiction. They may know people who are afflicted, but because they can’t identify with the sufferer, they delve into misconceptions.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/fi2XCsPKlY8

Hoffman was found dead over the weekend from an apparent overdose. News reports say the heroin needle was still in his arm. One friend on Facebook reacted with this comment:

I’m a little torn between saying Philip Seymour Hoffman was a really great actor and that I have zero sympathy for someone who overdoses.

I added my two cents, saying he had a disease and lost the fight. (He had sought help in the past, including rehab, to no avail.) To that, someone else responded:

Sorry, but while addiction may be euphemistically framed as a “disease” it starts with a choice and ultimately ends with one. If only every other disease were so convenient. I’m guessing we’d see a lot less childhood leukemia, multiple sclerosis, diabetes… etc.

It’s true: Addiction is not a disease the way those other maladies are. Childhood cancers and MS are certainly not things you can blame the patient for getting. At the other end of the spectrum are true diseases that are indeed the result of bad choices. Eat too much, exercise too little and smoke, and you risk getting any number of diseases.

Then there’s addiction.

Having suffered from it over the years, I see it the way I see depression and anxiety: mental illnesses that are affected by good and bad choices but not the direct result of carelessness. It often starts with a bad choice: The choice to try a line of coke or an injection of heroin. Sometimes the circumstances are more muddled. My binge eating addiction  is complicated by the fact that we need food to survive. The interplay between food, Crohn’s Disease and a prescription drug called Prednisone slowly corrupted my approach to food to the point where having it become an obsession. Obsession is often the path to addiction.

Once you become addicted to something, the urge to get a fix stops feeling like a choice. It becomes a matter of life and death — real or imagined. It controls you and laughs at your feeble attempts to resist. That’s the nature of the demon that killed Hoffman. It wasn’t about being smart or stupid.

I liken the reaction people have to his death to that of a suicide victim. When news of a suicide spreads, the reaction usually goes something like this: “How could he be so stupid? He had everything to live for.”

Statements like that come from people who have no idea how depression works. Statements that Hoffman was an idiot for sticking a needle in his arm come from people who have no clue about how addiction takes over a person and controls their every move.

To those who can make the right choices and escape addiction: Good for you. I wouldn’t wish addiction on my worst enemy. It hurts. It’s demeaning. It’s a thief.

I’m not going to tell you not to judge. Who am I to tell you what to do?

I will suggest that on the subject of this latest tragedy, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Sometimes, ignorance is a choice, too.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

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Sometimes, a Sex Song Is Just a Sex Song

Columnists have gone nuts since Beyoncé and husband Jay Z performed “Drunk in Love” at the Grammys. The song is about them having steamy, drunken sex. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet we can’t help pontificating about what it says of their marriage.

Here’s the Grammy Performance:

http://youtu.be/LaVeoJt0jfI

Here’s the official video, which is dirtier:

Debate over this song illustrates how we tend to overthink things.

Alyssa Rosenberg raved about the powerful case Beyoncé and Jay Z made for marriage in a Think Progress article:

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay-Z got on the Grammy stage last night and did what conservatives have been dying for someone to do for ages: they made marriage look fun, and sexy, and a source of mutual professional fulfillment.

Missing here is the fact that marriage is about much, much more than sex. It’s important, to be sure, but it’s not enough to make a marriage go the distance. Have all the steamy moments you want. If two people can’t fill the gaps in each other’s souls, nothing else matters.

On the other hand, New York Post writer Naomi Schaefer Riley declares that Jay-Z is a shitty husband:

For years, these award ceremonies have pushed the envelope; Beyoncé’s booty-shaking was certainly no worse than Miley Cyrus’s twerking or any number of other performances by Madonna, for instance. But there’s something particularly icky about doing it while your husband looks on approvingly.

“Honestly, I didn’t want to watch Jay Z and Beyoncé’s foreplay,” says Charlotte Hays, author of “When Did White Trash Become the New Normal?” Indeed, the happy couple seems to have completely blurred the line between what goes on in their bedroom and what happens on national TV. So much for the woman that Michelle Obama has called “a role model who kids everywhere can look up to.”

Too much information? Maybe. Does it prove Jay Z is a pig whose idea of a strong marriage is exploiting his wife? Not really. Long before these two hooked up, they were performers who never shied away from controversy. Riley suggests Beyoncé is a victim. She doesn’t give the singer nearly enough credit for controlling her image and destiny.

Another line of debate concerns this lyric from Jay Z in the song: “Eat the cake, Anna Mae.” Beyoncé joins in on the rap, which alludes to a scene in the 1993 Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It? where abusive husband and musical partner Ike Turner forces cake on his wife in the prelude to another violent blow up:

http://youtu.be/DadlLq2yrBw

Is one line of a song proof that he espouses domestic abuse? Hardly. Since the beginning of time we’ve heard musicians sing of love publicly while being abusive in their relationships. We’ve also heard musicians talk tough in song and be anything but offstage.

The thing is, sometimes a sex song is just a sex song.

beyonce and Jay Z