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Acting, Actor, Addiction, BBC, Drug Use, Drugs, film, Heroin, interview, Jeremy Paxman, movies, Narcotics, Newsnight, Opiates, Overdose, Philip Seymour Hoffman, tragedy, Will Self
Jeremy Paxman: Do you understand [Philip Seymour Hoffman’s] involvement with drugs?
Will Self: Well addiction’s no respecter of persons. You know there’s hardly anywhere you can point a finger, high or low in our society, and not hit somebody who’s got addiction issues. Heroin is a drug that we associate most strongly with addiction, but people can be addicted to all sorts of things. I think the fact that heroin was involved with his death is what people find very shocking, largely because of the image that heroin has in our culture…
The old sawhorse of whether the fact he was such an amazing actor was in some way connected to his drug use – or the pressures of his life led to his drug use – I dare say that’s in the mix, but you know, you can go to any poor or deprived part of our country, and throw a stick and you’ll hit somebody who’s got a heroin habit.
JP: It’s interesting, it’s often represented as a sort of loser’s drug, which is the environment that you are talking about there. By no stretch of the imagination was this man a loser.
WS: No, and as I say, you will find heroin addicts in every walk of life. But I think in America, in particular, there’s a very strange culture surrounding opiate drugs, which is the broader family of drugs of which heroin is one.
JP: What’s heroin like?
WS: You’re asking me personally?
I think that for people who don’t have a kind of need to be anesthetized, it probably is experienced as, yes, euphoric, but they wouldn’t necessarily feel a pull towards taking it again.
One of the strange things is that most of the people watching us now, at some time or other, will take medical diamorphine, which is heroin. And if they’re in pain, they’ll experience simply the removal of the pain.
JP: But it’s not instantly addictive though.
WS: No, it takes a fairly concerted effort to get addicted to opiate drugs, so you can say that people who do become addicted, maybe they’ve got a predisposition to it, but they have to make some decisions. They have to kind of decide to take it…
JP: But apparently he spent 20 years clean.
WS: Yes, that may well be true. Of course we don’t know whether he had other addictive behaviors that, so to speak, kept the addiction dormant.
I think that the way this story is being reported suggests this idea that addiction’s like a kind of ugly spirit that was cowed and pushed into the background, and then it reared up again in that way. I’m not sure that’s a very useful approach; it seems a rather medieval perception of it. But we don’t know what lead to him being in that situation. Again, very sadly, and this is only supposition, often with people who return to using heroin after a long period of abstinence, they can’t judge the dose. This happens quite frequently…
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Will Self and Jeremy Paxman, talking last week on BBC Newsnight about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
I recommend watching the remainder of this five minute interview for two primary reasons. First, Self is one of the more naturally expressive cultural commentators out there — and not only that, he’s a former heroin addict. Because of this, we must be extremely careful when weighing his words on this topic, especially those on the question of whether Hoffman’s creative genius was tied to his drug use, given that this riff could be a thinly veiled absolution of Self’s own related sins.
While I understand those who may take it this way — as a bit of self-justification designed to soften any critiques of his parallel personal history — I am inclined to take Self’s analysis as instructive, if also with a large grain of salt. His experience with the stuff colors his perception of it, sure, but it also means he knows more about it than I do. This is why the testimonies of sinners are always more powerful than those of saints: only they can say “I’ve been there” with a straight face.
I think it is also worth commending both Self and Paxman for the sobriety and gravity which they lend to this topic. So often, untimely celebrity deaths mark occasions for saccharine tributes and tabloid prying. So rarely do we recognize what we’ve lost and what we can learn. Yet notice how Paxman says “By no stretch of the imagination was this man a loser”; his voice registers the brilliance of Hoffman, the brutality of his demise, and how these two facts combine to cast a piteous shadow over the entire event. Hoffman’s death is devastating because he was a father, a son, and one of the most incandescently brilliant actors of our time. But it is also a moment for reflection because tragedies, unlike happy endings, are also the most dramatic lessons.
navigator1965 said:
The book “Why is it Always About You? – The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism” includes a chapter titled “Narcissism and Addiction: The Shame Connection.” While I do not speak ill of the dead, acting as a profession does seem to be something that would hold appeal to one with a narcissistic aspect to his or her personality.
I must agree with your assessment of Hoffman’s having been incandescently brilliant in terms of his acting. His is a terrible loss.
jrbenjamin said:
Hmm. That’s an interesting idea — and certainly addiction seems to crop up in people with particular personality traits — but why narcissism? I haven’t read the book, so obviously I can’t comment.
Nevertheless, there is something about actors (or writers or musicians) and the need to for inebriation. I’ve just picked up a copy of ‘The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking’. The title says it all. While I can’t say I’ve loved the book so far, it is an illuminating take on this creativity-addiction connection.
As always, thanks for the comment.
navigator1965 said:
My pleasure. From the chapter:
“Experts in the field of addictions widely agree that chronic and pervasive shame is the feeling that drives addictive and compulsive behaviour, giving narcissism and and addiction and emotional link.”
Unconscious shame, including an excruciating sensitivity to it, is held to be a or even the core emotional aspect to narcissism. You might try Andrew P. Morrison’s paper “Shame, Ideal Self, and Narcissism” in the book “Essential Papers on Narcissism,” which he edited.
Yes, the creativity-addiction connection is an interesting one. Is there a price to be paid for being creative?
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Food,Photography & France said:
My long and destructive time with drugs did nothing to improve or help my creativity. It was the jangle of the goaler’s keys that made it clear to me that I wanted no more of it. Since that moment I have tried to make up for lost time…..in vain.
jrbenjamin said:
Thank you for that sad but honest reflection. I’m afraid you’re neither the first nor the last to have that reflection; we’re all, as Proust may’ve said, in search of lost time.
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