“Yeah, I’m all in.”
December 14, 2017 2:28 AM   Subscribe

When Phil came back in November, he wanted so badly to stay sober, and for the next three months he did. But it was a struggle, heartbreaking to watch. For the first time I realized that his addiction was bigger than either of us. I bowed my head and thought, I can’t fix this. It was the moment that I let go. I told him, “I can’t monitor you all the time. I love you, I’m here for you, and I’ll always be here for you. But I can’t save you.”Mimi O’Donnell Reflects on the Loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Devastation of Addiction
posted by timshel (39 comments total) 51 users marked this as a favorite
 
My brother overdosed 3.5 years ago. Less than a week after my son was born. It is so fucking tragic. The thing that bothers me the most (and this is the top of a very long list) is that the talk about addiction and illness and death is always so abstract. More than 64,000 overdose deaths in America last year. Big, abstract number, right up until it's not.

My brother died, several of my friends from high school are dead, people I have known all my life, gone. It isn't just 64,000 deaths, it is 64,000 families, hundreds of thousands of friends and coworkers. It really is a tragedy.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:58 AM on December 14, 2017 [66 favorites]


Point being, great post, it is important to hear these stories.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:58 AM on December 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Welp, I'm going to have to read this when i'm not at work.
posted by diziet at 3:31 AM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


This was amazing. Hoffman's death hit me so damn hard. I am married to an Atlanta comic. Hoffman went to a lot of comedy shows when he was in town filming Hunger Games. Hoffman saw my spouse perform, and that made my spouse so fucking happy because he was one of our very favorite actors. People at Atlanta comedy shows sold Hoffman heroin because a lot of comics are drug dealers, and drug dealers don't care if they are killing one of the greatest actors of our generation. Reading this, knowing how much he was loved by his family and his community, knowing how hard everyone tried to save him, I still blame Atlanta for his death.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:02 AM on December 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


The idea that, after all these years, I can just have a drink now and then......scares the shit out of me. I could go get a beer after work tonight and I'm sure it would be fine. Tonight. But then I've created a situation where it's OK for me to do that. Just now and then! I give myself at best three months after that before I have a bad day, or get bored and lonely, and go to the liquor store, with the intention of just having a little whiskey around....only gonna have one or two tonight......and we're off.
posted by thelonius at 4:09 AM on December 14, 2017 [49 favorites]


Having recently experienced chemical opioid addiction and withdrawal for the first time in my life I can say with 100 percent certainty that the social problems created by opioid abuse are a medical and biological problem which can be resolved if we faced it as an illness and not an unresolvable flaw in someone’s character.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:19 AM on December 14, 2017 [71 favorites]


We == the entire United States. And we == government programs that gave people the support systems needed to overcome this.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:20 AM on December 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


sorry to derail

64,000 overdose deaths

Put Corporate Executives IN PRISON (will clean up a a lot of issues pdq)
posted by sammyo at 5:21 AM on December 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


One of my favorite things about reading is casting the characters in my head. Danny Trejo, Gwendoline Christie, Adrien Brody and a forty-something James Garner in a band of mercenaries, that kind of thing. Rarely a book goes by that I don't put Hoffman in it. Mostly because I admired his skill, but also because I miss having him in the world.

Addiction is such a fucking mess of a disease. It's relentless. It eats. I'm so sorry for what they've suffered, for what he suffered.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:23 AM on December 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Every time I read a piece like this, I always go back to the time Leo McGarry explained addiction.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:24 AM on December 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


The moment we made the decision, Cooper said, “She’s going to die. Dogs don’t live very long, so we’re going to see her die.” In her birth and in her coming to us, we were also mourning her death. Something about that felt right, knowing that everything you meet or love is going to die. I was in awe of my kids that they were able to hold both things in their heads at the same time. That’s who they are now.
That's where I lost it. What a beautiful, tragic article. Such a huge loss, and so frightening that addiction is bigger and stronger than true love and family and talent and money. It's a monster that is never satisfied. My heart breaks for her and her kids, but also Philip, and every person in the grip of something that takes every drop of energy to fight, all day long, every day.
posted by billiebee at 5:26 AM on December 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


It wasn’t so much that I wanted to date him. It was that I thought, You’re so attractive on every level that I want to be near you as much as I can.

Awwwwwwwwww. I am so sorry for her loss. That's an incredibly rare thing to find in the first place.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:47 AM on December 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


People at Atlanta comedy shows sold Hoffman heroin because a lot of comics are drug dealers, and drug dealers don't care if they are killing one of the greatest actors of our generation.

You learn something new every day.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:47 AM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I had never heard that about comics either, but it makes sense. It also seems like there is a tragicomic movie just waiting to be made. 23 Jump Street: Open (Magic) Mic?

(Abusing edit:) I would watch the shit out of a 21 Jump Street / Magic Mike crossover with a stand up tie in.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:22 AM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Every time I read a piece like this, I always go back to the time Leo McGarry explained addiction.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 8:24 AM on December 14 [2 favorites +] [!]


That bit, and the other one where he explained that he didn't understand people who "had enough" or left half a drink on the table, was the first time someone articulated things I'd been feeling inside for a long time in such an authentic way.

It helped.
posted by Thistledown at 7:50 AM on December 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


One of the aspects of the "attitude of gratitude" that I've cultivated as an AA member is that I didn't get into opioids. Even though staying sober hasn't always been easy, the struggles of the opioid addicts that I've known have been on another level entirely.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:57 AM on December 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


What a beautiful piece, she's an amazing writer. I admired him so completely, and hearing about their relationship makes me happy and breaks my heart.
posted by desuetude at 8:03 AM on December 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Just over six years ago, in November 2011, my favourite brother died at the age of 42 of a heart attack that was almost certainly caused by 25 years of excessive drinking and heavy smoking. There were other factors, such as that his teeth were in absolutely horrible shape, he had recently gone through a nasty divorce and then lost his house, and he was living hand to mouth financially, but then all those things were direct consequences of his drinking and smoking as well. This past October I lost a friend when, again largely thanks to alcoholism, she slipped into a diabetic coma and then died of a heart attack just three days before her 51st birthday. Several years ago a tenant of the basement apartment of my house had an addiction relapse, began drinking and using drugs, got behind on his rent and was behind on it for a year and a half, and then in January 2014 ultimately abandoned the apartment, owing me a lot of money and leaving the apartment in disastrous condition. He reappeared last July, saying he was 1.5 years sober and in school, and promising to pay me $100 or more a month until he'd paid what he owed me. He gave me the first $100 and then promptly disappeared again. The new phone number he gave me no longer works. My working theory is that he has relapsed again and is currently living somewhere on the cold winter streets of Toronto... and that like my brother and my friend, he may die.

Addiction is such a destroyer, and to even issue some general cautionary urging to others who are struggling and may read this feels so facile. Philip Seymour Hoffman had so much going for him and had a wonderful life and the resources to get the best help available, and he knew he had a problem that was endangering his life, and he desperately wanted to overcome it... and yet it still wasn't enough to save him. I've gathered from other things I've read about him that he had an inborn hyper susceptibility to addiction and the kind of naturally bleak mindset that was hard to live with and made him crave some form of relief or escape. My brother, my friend, and my tenant were all cheerful, upbeat people who seemed to enjoy life and who had a lot of people who cared about them and were eager to help them, and yet something in them made them prone to addiction and they couldn't seem to overcome it, even with all the resources available to them.

As a society we need to find better ways to treat addiction. Some people manage to get theirs under control with help, but it's too hard for too many, and too many people are sinking beneath the waves.
posted by orange swan at 8:05 AM on December 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Societal stigmatization and villification of addictive behaviors doubtless accounts for countless preventable deaths. We need to change attitudes before we’ll see real improvement. I’ve known otherwise strong and responsible individuals who masked raging addictions for years, fearful that they’d lose their jobs and/or families. Some survived, some did not. They should not have had to face the horror alone.
posted by kinnakeet at 8:20 AM on December 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


As someone who quit drinking and drugs in my early 20s, this was (ahem) a sobering article. I know a guy who's been clean for about 30 years now, who also got sober in his early 20s. One of his favorite things to mention is the 'internal translator' that would go to work in his mind when he was in his active addiction. Someone would say to him, "this is your last chance!" and in his head that would somehow turn into "you have two more chances!" I've always liked that as an illustration of addictive thinking. When we're in it, we tell ourselves that we can quit when it gets bad enough... but we fail to realize that it almost never gets bad enough quickly enough to really shock us into a new equilibrium. Those windows of willingness to change are often frighteningly brief.

I've seen people get into the mindset that they'll get sober for a while, clean up their lives, maybe get some therapy, go back to drinking or using when they're quite sure they can handle it, and come back for more sobriety when it seems appropriate. The problem with that plan is that they might not actually have a choice in deciding when to quit again. I think it's vital for me to remember that once I take that drink, I won't get to choose how bad things become before I actually stop again. This article was a powerful reminder of that.

[I know that the AA-abstinence model has been controversial, and I always try to point out what its literature mentions: that the 12-step model has no monopoly on recovery, its adherents simply have something that's worked for them.]
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 9:09 AM on December 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


AA is a good social support system and people suffering can be and are helped by AA. I believe AA along with good public policy and well-funded public health initiatives would help people struggling with addiction tremendously more than AA alone is helping today. AA shouldn't be controversial, it is a good and necessary part of a complete support system, of which the "complete" part is acutely lacking in the U.S.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:20 AM on December 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Every time I read a piece like this, I always go back to the time Leo McGarry explained addiction. yt

This ran with an advertisement for Woodford Reserve before it when I clicked the link.
posted by srboisvert at 9:31 AM on December 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile, we begrudge equipping first responders with Narcan because "these people just want to die anyway; why are we stopping them?" As if, separate from their own value as fellow-human beings, each addict doesn't have his or her own loving family and friends who will always be devastated by their loss.

A (very good) Hollywood actor gets to be human; Troy and Erika on the library lawn are garbage.
posted by praemunire at 9:51 AM on December 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


My father is an alcoholic, although he's been sober for most of my life. I have few memories of my early childhood, but I remember having to step over him, passed out in the living room, to leave the house on the way to stay with my grandmother, and eating S'Mores cereal when we got there. I remember that he got sober at an inpatient program at a nearby psychiatric hospital, and I remember the childcare worker's shocked face when four-year-old me told her we were there because my daddy was an alcoholic.

I remember standing on the corner near our house every evening, waiting for him to walk home across the train tracks from the truck depot on the other side, where he worked. I remember that one night I waited and waited and he didn't come. My mother yelled out the kitchen window for me to come back inside. I didn't see him again for ten years or so, and honestly I'd prefer that I'd never seen him again. The loss, just after I'd started Kindergarten, was like a death, and seeing him again was more like a Pet Semetary than some kind of glorious resurrection.

Part of his addiction, I think, is that he's a philanderer. He's spent his whole life walking out on women, on families. We weren't the only ones. I think he's living with one of my half brothers right now. He's in poor health--he drank enough 35 years ago to cause serious health problems that have persisted through his sobriety--but I think he's going to live forever just to spite everybody.

You might argue that the serial abandonment is just because he's an asshole, and maybe you're right. After all, it's behavior that continued long after he got sober. But I think that in him, and in some other people with addictions, there's a cluster of personality traits, many of which are destructive. Addiction might have a lot of moving parts, and treating it isn't necessarily a matter of just treating the substance-abuse behavior; there's a reason "dry drunk" is a thing.

I don't harbor ill will toward my father, and I don't think I ever have, although I'd certainly be well-entitled. And although obviously it's not the same, I hope Phil's kids won't resent their father for his addictions although, again, they'd be entitled and I wouldn't necessarily fault them if they did.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:51 AM on December 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


A (very good) Hollywood actor gets to be human; Troy and Erika on the library lawn are garbage.

Having known more than a few people who hold the "Troy and Erika on the library lawn are garbage" attitude, I can attest that they don't give any passes to Hollywood actors. There are a lot of folks for which drugs are simply some kind of full-on empathy nuke.

I don't know if there are comments on the article (I never ever look anymore) but if there are I'm certain you'll find quite a lot of evidence to support this statement.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:59 AM on December 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


oh god between this and Newtown photos being shared I am a quivering puddle at my desk
posted by Theta States at 10:11 AM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


The other part of addiction is the inevitable outrage visited on friends and relatives. Love compounds pain. Even if you come to realize that you can be there for the addict, you don't always understand that you can't cure them. When they die it's always your fault. You might have done or said the magic thing that helped them turn away from drugs or alcohol. Being an onlooker means trying to establish boundaries; the sorriest feeling in the world is knowing what enabling means. You can't always figure out whether to push or pull. Addicts in remission have a hollow place in their soul where trust used to live; those who love them carry in their hearts a subliminal chill that comes alive when the phone rings in the night.

Nothing about addiction is fair.
posted by mule98J at 10:21 AM on December 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


I've read that thousands of Viet Nam vets came home from using heroin to escape the terrors of their tours and dropped using despite widespread concerns of an addicted generation of returning soldiers, this widely did not occur. In another example, in tests on rats, they were given the option of drinking from cocaine laced water or regular water. If the rats are in an optimal environment they largely ignore the drug, if they are in a sterile environment, they go for the drug.
In my own life, I can't break or stop addictions or bad habits, I can replace and supplant them with something better. In my simplistic analysis, Hoffman and other addicts never find the something better. Their dopamine circuitry is habituated to a particular set of circumstances and rewards which is retriggered in their environment on a regular basis, and they lack the tools to redirect their biology to something healthier and safer.
posted by diode at 10:26 AM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


But many people are using heroin because they got addicted to prescription narcotics, and then the prescriptions or money ran out, but hey, there's a guy at work who knows where to get heroin. It's much cheaper, I hear.
posted by thelonius at 11:13 AM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


That was so well written. I kept thinking that if I could hang in until the end, perhaps the ending would somehow change.

.
posted by 4ster at 11:25 AM on December 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


But many people are using heroin because they got addicted to prescription narcotics, and then the prescriptions or money ran out, but hey, there's a guy at work who knows where to get heroin.

This is by no means clear. It's one of the most frustrating aspects of our current drug policy that we don't have a clear idea how many people become addicted (a) in the course of normal use of opioids prescribed for a legitimate purpose; (b) in the course of use of opioids with a fraudulently-obtained prescription (e.g., through a pill mill, though we've clearly cut down on those); (c) through diversion of opioids legitimately prescribed for someone else (e.g., teens raiding Gramma's cabinet); or (d) through regular old ordinary street purchases. It seems that the best responses to each of these problems would be somewhat different and that we should probably be prioritizing policies that deal with the most common scenarios. It's noteworthy that the huge emphasis on (a) in the media only emerged once heroin became perceived again as a "white" problem; it seems to be morally satisfactory to people because it relieves the white addict of much of the blame for the problem (if you insist on assigning blame, that is, as so many do). (a) certainly is not imaginary, but its relative frequency remains largely a mystery.
posted by praemunire at 11:27 AM on December 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


(From the limited information, it sounds like Hoffman got started in scenario (b) or (c). But that's not certain.)
posted by praemunire at 11:29 AM on December 14, 2017


In another example, in tests on rats, they were given the option of drinking from cocaine laced water or regular water. If the rats are in an optimal environment they largely ignore the drug, if they are in a sterile environment, they go for the drug.

That would be the Rat Park study: it involves a morphine solution, it's been discussed on the blue before, and the study, well, has issues.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:31 AM on December 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


People get addicted to prescription drugs, the doctor cuts them off, they are still addicted. They find substitutes. This is widely documented. So you can't just say 3000 people died from prescription drugs and everyone else has poor impulse control.
Addiction is a disease. You can have a great job, a beautiful wife, a brand new baby in the house, and still drink yourself to the point of contemplating suicide. DAMHIKT.
Some people are prone to addiction, some aren't. There's no way to tell who is and who isn't without field research, which can end badly.
posted by rudd135 at 11:52 AM on December 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


People at Atlanta comedy shows sold Hoffman heroin because a lot of comics are drug dealers, and drug dealers don't care if they are killing one of the greatest actors of our generation.

You learn something new every day.


I'd guess this has something to do with a lot of comics being drug addicts.

What I really meant here was "those same comics" - I'm not big on blaming things on low-level drug dealers for this reason - but I guess there's probably also a general "hard to make a living as a comic" factor.
posted by atoxyl at 11:56 AM on December 14, 2017


People get addicted to prescription drugs, the doctor cuts them off, they are still addicted. They find substitutes. This is widely documented. So you can't just say 3000 people died from prescription drugs and everyone else has poor impulse control.

No, really, this is a story. It feels good and right to you. People really want a model of addiction, and a general narrative around drugs, that feels good and right to them...but that has, in the past, led to people believing some pretty ridiculous things, and doing some pretty harmful ones. Though we know that some people do in fact become addicted through legitimate prescriptions, we just don't know how common this is relative to other pathways to addiction. Public policies designed to prevent people like Hoffman from getting their hands on drugs prescribed for no good reason by friendly doctors (or from starting out with diverted pills) are different from public policies designed to prevent anyone from ever getting addicted through legitimate use. This matters not merely because we want the most efficient prevention and treatment approaches, but because pain relief for a lot of vulnerable people is at stake. The chronically ill are threatened with becoming the latest collateral damage in the war on drugs.

I try not to get emotionally invested in creators' personal lives. Hoffman's death was still shocking and saddening to me (I still regret we never got to see him do Bunny in an adaptation of The Secret History), and this essay is a poignant look at the repercussions for his family. But we should still avoid the temptation of the easy explanation. I could be wrong, but, from everything I've heard, it doesn't sound like Hoffman started off on that pathway. (Even if he did, anecdotes, data, etc.)
posted by praemunire at 12:05 PM on December 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


That story about the flaws in the Rat Park study is pretty interesting. Thanks for the link. It's often easier to get caught up in the plausible tale and ignore the more complex reality.
posted by diode at 12:09 PM on December 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


The idea that, after all these years, I can just have a drink now and then......scares the shit out of me. I could go get a beer after work tonight and I'm sure it would be fine. Tonight. But then I've created a situation where it's OK for me to do that. Just now and then! I give myself at best three months after that before I have a bad day, or get bored and lonely, and go to the liquor store, with the intention of just having a little whiskey around....only gonna have one or two tonight......and we're off.
posted by thelonius at 12:09 PM on December 14
This. I've been sober a long time and over the years I've seen so many people relapse. It never starts with full-on alcoholic drinking, but the odd beer or glass of wine, and the idea that just one or two drinks is just fine, a deadly idea that worms its way into the brain.

When I first got into AA I'd hear the old-timers say "it's a killer disease", and I thought they were just being overdramatic and scare-mongering. But as the years have gone by I've seen friends try controlled drinking, quickly lose control, end up back in AA and sometimes they're lucky and stay sober. But many have died, some in the long-term agony of liver failure, some from alcoholic poisoning, two who passed out drunk in the street and hit their heads on the pavement and one friend who didn't die, but ended up with Korsakov's Syndrome (wet brain), a kind of dementia, a living hell.

So every time I walk past a pub in the summer and see people sitting outside with their pints of icy lager with the condensation on the glass and think "mmmm, that looks good", I make myself remember that I never drank lager to quench my thirst; I drank it to get shit-faced and for no other reason.

The last Christmas before I got sober, every gift I received was alcohol of some kind. After my initial elation of "Woo-hoo, moar booze for me!" there was a sort of unease that set in. I got no other gifts than booze. No books, no CDs, no Body Shop gift sets, no chocolates. The only thing people thought of when they thought of me was alcohol. And all I did was get drunk.

This Christmas I have such a full calendar of events with friends - things that I used to sneer at when I was a drunk, friendless and alone in my living room with the curtains drawn. A nativity play, carol singing, a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, bowling, lots of meals out in nice restaurants. I know more than I can put into words how lucky I am to have this life and how quickly I could throw it all away by having "just one glass of wine..."
posted by essexjan at 1:20 PM on December 14, 2017 [40 favorites]


I was in a long term relationship with a heroin addict for several years. I have been clean and sober all my life and never partook in part because I have a sense that I'd not be able to handle alcohol or drugs. I'm a real "all or nothing" person even with foods. To whit, I can't have just one chip so its better to have none than the whole tin.

Anyhow, my ex was a serious user and no amount of cajoling, begging, bribing, threatening, loving or anything could make her stop. Even when she wanted to stop (which was about half the time and half-heartedly) she couldn't.

She went on methadone maintenance finally and even that was sometimes only a temporary solution. The lure of the spoon and cotton and flame was sometimes way too much for her and even if she'd taken her dose of methadone in the morning, she'd be out searching for her dealer and revealing yet another cache of needles in our apartment.

Aimee Mann's "High On Sunday 51" came out while I was in this relationship and I recognized myself (and my ex) in this song thoroughly. I became convinced that I was the only thing keeping her alive, which probably isn't where the codependency began but was certainly when I recognized it.

She lived, we broke up and she's gotten clean(er) now with her husband who is much more forceful and believable with his threats to leave her if she relapses.

We didn't have kids and I was terrified about the idea of having a child with her because I was always certain that she was going to end up dead one night. She's a talented, intelligent woman and was very high functioning even when she was using. "No one minds a junkie with a well paying job." I think the fact that she was able to function so well is part of what made it hard to quit - if it wasn't keeping her from doing the things she wanted to do, why was it a problem? I think that was her attitude, but I also heard her friends saying that to her.

Anyhow, a really rough stretch of years and I'm glad its over (I had health problems that went away within months of breaking up) but I also feel a huge amount of empathy for Mimi O'Donnell and fora anyone whose gone through this as either as an addict or as a family member of an addict.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:51 PM on December 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


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