Actors and Addiction

Many talented people sometimes use and abuse drugs and alcohol, and engage in other self-destructive habits to deal with painful inner or outer experiences.

Best Actor Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman [“Capote”] admitted that earlier in his life he used “Anything I could get my hands on. I liked it all." He got sober at 22, he says, because he “got panicked for my life."

According to federal statistics, more than 19 millio
Americans age 12 or older are illicit drug users; 121 million use alcohol, and about 50 million are smokers.

Addiction psychologist Marc F. Kern, Ph.D., says “Altering one's state of consciousness is normal” and that a destructive habit or addiction is “mostly an unconscious strategy - which you started to develop at a naive, much earlier stage of life - to enjoy the feelings it brought on or to help cope with uncomfortable emotions or feelings. It is simply an adaptation that has gone awry.” {From his site HabitDoc.com]

William H. Macy, also an Oscar nominee [“Fargo”] once commented, “Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.”

While that may not be literally true, many actors and other people have had painful lives, and use substances to cope.

Tatum O'Neal, an Oscar winner at age 10, says in her autobiography (“A Paper Life”) that growing up she had to deal with her mentally unstable mother and volatile and unpredictable father, in an environment of drugs, neglect, and physical and mental abuse. By age 20, she was addicted to cocaine.

Psychiatrist Leon Wurmser, M.D. says “Anxiety of an overwhelming nature and the emotional feelings of pain, injury, woundedness, and vulnerability appear to be a feature common to all types of compulsive drug use.” [From his article Drug Use as a Protective System, on addictioninfo.org]

Being driven to achieve can also lead to addiction problems. Chris Penn fought cocaine and alcohol abuse for years, but died recently at age 40. Like many talented people in the arts, he wanted to do more and more, often working late into the night and getting little sleep.

Entertainment executives and producers, even fellow actors, may enable drug and alcohol abuse by stars, unless it gets too “out of control.” As fictional movie studio exec Peter Dragon (Jay Mohr) said in the TV series "Action" (1999): "Yeah - in rehab you're an addict; on a sound stage you're a tortured genius."

Robert Downey Jr. has been “indulged” for years on account of his exceptional talent. His former wife Sarah Jessica Parker admits, “In every good and bad way, I enabled him to show up for work. If he didn’t, I’d cover for him, find him, clean him up. He was like a broken pipe with a leak that you’re constantly putting tape around and tape over tape, but you can’t stop the leaking.” [Parade magazine, January 29, 2006]

Kazimierz Dabrowski, MD, Ph.D. (1902-1980), a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist, noted that many gifted and talented people may experience ”increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety, inhibitions, and ambivalences”

These complicated emotions and inner experience can help make good actors outstanding in their work, but can also lead to addictive behavior.

Successfully dealing with addictive behavior can be invaluable in many ways. Richard Lewis commented in his memoir, “I have been sober for almost eight years and my life is a billion percent better. Now I don't have the craving for alcohol, I have the craving for clarity and life.”

But getting there is usually not easy. Lynda Carter [“Wonder Woman”] has talked about her years of addiction to alcohol as a "genetic predisposition that sort of grabbed hold of me. It was like staring into a deep, dark hole that I thought no one would understand or still love me if I ever admitted it. I was very good at hiding my problem."

Ewan McGregor also has talked about feeling shame: “I think drinking and being out of control narrows your options in front of the camera. I was just ashamed of myself, really. Originally, I was a happy drunk. But later I was miserable because it’s a depressant.”

Jamie Lee Curtis talks about learning to take better care of herself as part of her recovery: “I'm getting better at setting limits. I used to hide my resentments in drugs and alcohol. Now I've had to figure out other ways to handle them.”

Gaining that control is worth the effort, as Downey has commented [LA Times May 14, 2005], “I've never been as trustworthy or worked so hard as I am now [being sober]. I'm having a better time. It's more fun to be clear and accountable.”nn---

Douglas Eby writes about psychological and social aspects of creative expression and achievement. His site has a wide range of articles, interviews, quotes and other material to inform and inspire: Talent Development Resources http://talentdevelop.com