PSH

This morning I awoke to the incredibly tragic news that Phillip Seymour Hoffman had passed away. For someone who aspires to work with actors like Hoffman, actors who are as enigmatic as they are talented, who consistently give perfectly flawed performances, this was tough news to handle.

Discussions on social media quickly turned to the subject of addiction and what it means to be an addict with responses ranging from the dismissive and insensitive to the empathetic and considerate.

People were calling Hoffman stupid and selfish, comparing his death to other tragedies and saying that by comparison his death is not tragic, calling addiction a ‘decision’ and ‘choice’. 

I was mortified.   

Even though some people were saying these things with relatively good intentions (e.g. using his death as an incentive for beating addiction) there was this judgemental undertone that addiction is an example of a person’s moral failing. 

To me it seemed like condemnation rather than compassion.  

I feel that some people in society have such a lack of empathy for drug addicts because there is this mindset that “it was their own selfish choice that got them into their situation and if they could just stop taking whatever substance or go to rehab everything would be fine.” But I’m afraid that is just not reality.   

I haven't had any personal experience with addiction, but a person doesn’t have to have experienced something in order to acknowledge the seriousness of another person’s struggles and to understand their pain and suffering. It was not Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s fault that he died. It is no drug addicts fault that they are caught in the suffocating, irrevocable grasp of addiction. Addiction is a disease for which there is no cure, whilst getting clean is the best possible option, it is not a cure as the remnants of addiction are always there, waiting to be awoken.

I pray for the day when people stop treating addicts like stupid, selfish fools and start treating them like fellow human beings who need our help and our empathy.

 “The way we talk about a celebrity who ODs says a lot about the way we think about people who are struggling around us. It’s time we tried to understand struggles we don’t endure ourselves. It’s called empathy, and we could all use a lot more of it.” 

(Source: Vaughan, C, 2013, A Note About Philip Seymour Hoffman: Addiction IsNot Selfish.)