SUBSTANCE ABUSE: DOES WHO YOU ARE MATTER?

SUBSTANCE ABUSE: DOES WHO YOU ARE MATTER?

            When you hear about a beloved celebrity who died from an overdose or some other complication of an addiction what do you think of? If you are like a lot of people, you think about how sad it is how much potential they had, things like that. Now think about how you feel if you read the paper and there is a small article on page 10 about some anonymous person dying from an overdose. What do you think then? If you are like a lot of people you think oh well, they knew what they were getting into. They should not have been living their life that way. Some people even go as far as to say they got what they deserve. I hope that I am not the only person who sees something wrong with this way of thinking. I hope that the majority of people do not base the actions of a person or whether a person’s death is their own fault on whom the person is.

            An addict is an addict is an addict, no matter what their social status, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, job (or lack there-of), etc. is. As a society, when we look at some people with substance abuse issues, we simply think that they are “behaving badly” like we do with celebrities that we love, we are hurting that person. Everyone needs to be held accountable for their actions. Looking at a rock star who parties hard as “that is what rock stars do” or looking at a child star (or former child star) who gets high or drinks too much as “they just had too much too soon” is saying that these people are not responsible for their addictions. In fact we are almost saying that it is to be expected. However, if most people see someone on the street who is clearly drunk or high, just some random person who we don’t know, most people think that person is below them. Many people think thoughts like “what a loser”.

            Why does it matter who we are? I am a recovering addict. By the grace of my higher power, I have not gotten high in just about 9 and ½ years. Since I have a history of addiction and a history in 12 step programs, I have a lot of friends who have histories with addiction. Not one of us is a loser and there is not a celebrity addict or alcoholic who is better than us. Whether you believe in the disease concept of addiction or you believe it is hereditary, or you simply believe that people choose to abuse some type of substance, it does not change the fact that when it comes to their addiction, all addicts are the same. Whether it is Michael Jackson or a homeless person who is doing whatever they can to get high every night, they are both addicts. There are differences of course in the way they get their drugs or use those drugs. Such as MJ had a doctor and/or nurse administering his drugs and the homeless person is going to buy his drugs from a street “pharmacist”. Those things don’t change the basic fact that they were both using a substance to change their personalities or to change their mood or to make themselves feel better in some way. Addicts oftentimes have a lot of pain that they are in. A lot of times it is psychological pain. They don’t know how to deal with that pain, so they alter themselves with a drug or with alcohol.

            What prompted me to write this blog post is something a friend said about the death of Jeff Conway. A lot of people have been posting how sad they are at Mr. Conway’s death. But my friend saw a lot of posts about how he got what he deserved and other such comments. This shows me that being a celebrity does not matter. You have to be a certain type of celebrity in order for your addiction or death being related in some way to an addiction to be thought of as a horrible turn of events. I guess you have to be an A-list celebrity in order for it not to be your fault, for a person to be held accountable for their actions. So I once again want to point out that an addict is an addict is an addict. I hope that we someday get to a point in our collective way of thinking where we think that any death is sad. All deaths should be mourned. That someday we get to a point where we don’t put some people up on a pedestal and forgive everything they do, no matter what it is, while at the same time condemning other people for doing the very same thing. A point where we realize that we are all equal and no one is better than anyone else because they are famous or because they have a lot of money or for any other external factor.

Janet Lee Smith
05/30/2011