Thursday, May 31, 2007

Celebrity addiction

I've been seeing/hearing a lot about Lindsay Lohan and her DUI. According to the interweb, she has entered a rehab facility in LA where she will surely sober up, rediscover the joys of a sober life, and turn her life around. As Britney Spears and a bevy of other celebrities, athletes, and infamous characters have proven, rehabilitation has an incredibly high success rate...or not so much.

According to a study by Liverpool John Moores University, "The proportion of drug users who successfully completed treatment decreased from 5.8% in 1998 to 3.5% in 2002, but the proportion of drug users who came back to start treatment again after dropping out of treatment increased from 22.9% in 1998 to 48.6% in 2002." Source Not so encouraging, is it? Only 3.5% of the people entering British rehabilitation programs in 2002 successfully completely the program. That means 96.5% failed, with less than half of those returning at some point after dropping out to give it another go.

There's no doubt that addicts should seek a means of breaking their addictions. Addicts not only damage their bodies and ruin their lives, but they tend to take loved ones, and sometimes friends, down with them. Then there is the crime factor, as well as the intangible, social decay that cannot be measured, but should be pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention.

What I find hard to understand is the addict's drive and motivation. Even at my lowest point, when I used to wake up every day wishing that I hadn't, there wasn't a time where I sought refuge in substances or behaviors. I didn't want to drink or screw my way to an escape from the pain. There was no need to run, because running only delayed the inevitable, i.e. facing your demons, crushing them, and moving on. My decision to dig in, face the ghosts that were haunting me, and systematically cut them out like a cancer was nothing special, it simply made the most sense. There was no need for anyone to hold my hand, or remind me that I was a good person, or provide me pills to numb the depression I was experiencing. Granted, I probably had it easier than some, but people like Lindsay Lohan certainly have not had a hard existence.

So why are we so forgiving of her ilk? Why is the general public so fascinated by someone who is so incredibly stupid, weak, and irrelevant? I am at a loss. People like the drama, I suppose. It seems that a certain subset of people enjoy drama and actively seek it out in their lives and in the lives of others. Everything becomes a dramatic event. Rather than focusing on finding ways to tranquility, they prefer the stress and distraction of a life imagined. And that is what drama is, for the most part, a product of our imaginations. In some ways we all fall prey to this desire for drama, I suppose, but I am trying hard to completely discard it from my life, as there really is no purpose in it.

Life is simple, so simple that it makes our interpretation of it seem absolutely absurd. Simply put, life does not give a shit about any of us. Hard times befall us all, and life's only concern is with its own perpetuation. What force perpetuates life? Strength. The strong overcome their struggles, while the weak succumb. The strong set their own path, while the weak seek ways to be carried forward. Life does not care about our feelings, our fears, our hopes, our dreams, as none of those purely cerebral experiences have any significance in the natural order. The only thing that matters is strength and weakness, as the strong will find a way while the weak will falter.

Of course, there are those who believe strength is a purely tangible, physical, or sociological phenomena, meaning they will seek to intimidate, manipulate, or exploit the weak. We need only look at social institutions like crime, corruption, and violence to see how this mindset manifests itself in a generic societal construct. But there will also be those who realize that true strength is mastering one's own life in a way that makes the things like intimidation, exploitation, and the like utterly pointless. These people will realize that strength is about the ability to persevere, to carry on, and ultimately, to transcend the confines of physical existence. It is in all of us to be one of those people, but few of us will ever find our ways through to that sort of freedom.

Humanity's fascination with people like Lindsay Lohan serves as a telling testimonial of just how lost we truly are as a species. Give me the anonymous, hard working, honest man or woman doing what's right despite their life's adversities over these shallow, pointless celebrities any day. We should idolize the strength of integrity, courage, and dedication, not the weakness of dishonesty, cowardice, and infidelity. Somehow the worst of us have come to represent the rest of us, and we have subsequently become sympathetic where we would have once been disgusted. There is a place for compassion, but I prefer to save it for people following their conscience, doing what they can to contribute to what's good in this world, where so many only take.

Strength and weakness, it's simple, really.

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Posted by Erik @ 5/31/2007 10:38:00 AM