Entertainers and Drugs. Why?

Recently Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose.  This has been reported as a terrible tragedy, and of course it is.

Not more so, I'll note, than the hundreds of anonymous people who likewise die the same way, but whom aren't well known, or known at all.  Their deaths are equally tragic.

One of the odd things about something like this, as well, is the impulse to excuse away the tragic results of addiction on the basis that addiction is a disease.  As in this posts which maintains that addicts have no free will, and therefore cannot help themselves.  Addiction is a terrible thing, and indeed depending upon the type of addiction it is, they can become lethal, both in the need for the drug and in effects upon the body upon withdrawal from the drugs.  But the tendency in the modern world to label any vice seems self indulgent.  There is hardly any evil of any kind that somebody will not excuse away as a compulsion driven by addiction.  We all have our failings and weaknesses, to be sure, but some act against them and some act with them.  Many do both at different times, or even at the same time. By excusing every vice as an addiction, compulsion or personal quirk serves to excuse them, when perhaps the opposite is more in order.

There is, apparently, a rise in heroin use.  That catches me by surprise as what heroin mostly causes me to recall is the television police shows of the 1970s in which the police were always chasing down somebody distributing heroin.  From what i read in an article in The New Republic the other day, that in fact had its basis in truth as apparently the drug, which is amongst those which is most likely to kills it users, was in fact in big circulation in the 1960s and 70s amongst the poor.  It's a really bad drug, causing a true physical addiction that can result in the user's death.

That leads to the question of why the return of heroin now, and amongst those who don't fit into a dispossessed underclass.  According to the article, the reason has to do with prescription opiates.

Now, I'm not a pharmacist or a doctor, so that narcotics are generally opiates is something I wasn't aware of. But apparently they are, and the article claimed that prescription drugs are the modern gateway to heroin, the same way that marijuana once was.  I don't know that I'm fully convinced of this (it seems a stretch) but that prescription narcotics are now widely abused and stolen is well known. Apparently Realtors now ask people who are showing their homes to remove them from their drug cabinets, because people cruise open homes just to steal them. Anyhow, the thesis is that this has introduced opiates to a new class, who become addicted to them and then move on to an even more dangerous, unregulated drug.

I guess I have to count myself lucky here, and to be careful about being judgmental (which we should always be careful about anyhow) as I have a very hard time imagining why people want to use these drugs in general.  That is, in part, as the few times I've ever had prescriptions in this category, they've made me really sick and I determined after about a day of use that I'd rather just endure the pain, which wasn't as bad as the sad effects of the drugs.  And I can't see what effect they have that a person would enjoy. The one time I've had morphine, after ending up in the hospital due to a horse accident, I couldn't stand it, even though it didn't make me ill.  It made me sleep a weird chemical sleep that is just horrible.

I don't even like the feeling that conventional alcohol gives a person.  I like beer okay, but I don't like to feel any effect from drinking it, which means that I wouldn't be too inclined to sit and drink that much of it.  This doesn't make me virtuous, it makes me lucky.

Anyhow, having said that, even if it is true that the heroin boom is due to prescription drugs, I still can't see why this is so common amongst entertainers.  The most common cited reason is stress.  I guess I can see that a bit, as people in really stressful occupations are more subject to drug and alcohol abuse, and other sorts of vices.  I know that drug and alcohol addiction (as well as other addictions) are regarded as an occupational hazard for lawyers and most state bars have programs to address it.  But that just seems different to me.  Acting as a job wouldn't seem to be stressful in and of itself, although getting roles would be extremely stressful, I'd guess.  For that reason, I'd guess, most actors probably would want to have a back up career, but maybe they don't. And I'd guess that perhaps if a person has been successful that might actually prevent them from having one.  Still, I know that at least some, like Wilford Brimley or Paul Newman have, in the form of farms.  I guess it's easy for me to not appreciate the stress they're under.

Still, it does seem that as a class they're bizarrely subject to problems of a personal nature, and always have been.  It's certainly the case that going all the way back to the silent film days you can find examples of actors having extreme personal problems.  Is this unique to them, or is it perhaps that the vices that average people are subject to simply become better known amongst them. Or perhaps they have the means and opportunity to exercise their failings in a way that average people do not.  Probably the fact that people cater to their vices doesn't help, whereas most people have to hide theirs.  And at least in musicians, drugs have long been a problem.  There are jazz songs dating back to the dawn of recorded music that have drugs, sometimes in a hidden fashion, but often quite openly, as their topic. 

In the end, I guess, I don't know what to make of this topic. But I do feel that one of the tragedies of a tragedy like this, is that we don't really take note of the average people who fall prey to the same ill.