The Chemical Amusement Park

Phillip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been. 

-John Greenleaf Whittier 

The tragic death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman comes as  a sad end to another actor's brilliant career.   In retrospect, whether he was playing the pathetic gasoline sniffer in "Love Liza" or the compulsive gambler in "Owning Mahoning", he didn't have to go far to find inspiration from his own life as a recovering addict.  I was blissfully unaware of his problems with drug abuse until late on February 2 when, listening to the BBC news 94.7 I heard the news announcer mentioned that "tributes to Phillip Seymour Hoffman" are pouring in.  I knew right then that he must have died.  No one gets "tributes" unless you have  shuffled off the mortal coil.  

 He was great actor and if he'd not died so suddenly he would certainly gone on to other great roles which now of course will never be. Like Heath Ledger's "Batman, the Dark Knight", Hoffman's last appearances on the screen will be posthumous:  the two upcoming Hunger Games sequels. And "Happyland" will never be.  He was great in just about everything he was in, and even in stuff that otherwise was crap, like "Twister".   And of course he was best remembered for his performance in "Capote" a biopic about another celebrity fixture who like Hoffman came to his end through an overdose. 

And so the heartbeat goes on for some but not for them, these

Ledger 1979-2008

VERY public figures like Heath Ledger, or Whitney Houston, Keith Moon, John Belushi, Elvis Presley, Chris Farley, Michael Jackson etc. These are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head.    I could of course go on and on with the list of show business persons who have died from polypharmacy, drug abuse, alcohol or both.  Show business is very demanding and having to be "up" for the performance is a constant necessity.  Is it any wonder then that all those psychoactive

Belushi 1949-1982

chemical substances are so tempting for a performer, or for anyone else who habitually has to take things beyond normal human endurance.   And of course, with money being no object, or at least less of an object than it is for most of us, there is nothing to restrain the artist from his appetite for mood-altering stuff, from fried food, to drink, and ultimately to cocaine, heroin, or clomethizole.  A delusion about our indestructibility seems to prevail until the moment of death. 


One minute you are on top of the world and the next minute you are a piece of  newly decaying meat on the bathroom floor.   We are God's meat puppets and you never know when he's going to lose interest in you and go on to other toys.  We are fragile, and not enough oxygen or too much dope and it's all over.  Our bladder empties, and our rectum too and all the king's horses and all the king's men aren't going to put you back together again. 

We fill you with preservatives, dress you up in backless tuxedo, present you in an attractive box, say some nice things about you, cry if we must, and then put you in a hole somewhere, since you aren't going to keep in any case. 

We all have to find a way to live within our own skins.  Some of us live from one spurt of dopamine to the next.  Many people, especially those in demanding careers without a regular schedule and lots of money are suddenly given the keys to the candy store and discover all sorts of new ways to control their moods, their energy level.  Sometimes it is the desire to escape from boredom or perhaps at the low end of a mood swing a deliberate choice to escape from life.  Culturally some kinds of drug-like amusements are condoned if not actually recommended by authorities. 

dopamine

Can you go to a baseball game without being offered a beer or maybe two?   Isn't even the common expedient of overeating a kind of self medication?  And of course hundreds of millions of people worldwide can't go more than a few hours without a cigarette.  And so the line between what is licit and illicit is kind of artificial.   Prohibition taught us to leave some forms of chemical amusement alone.  You go ahead and smoke and drink yourselves to death if you want to.  It's your right to do so.  It's perfectly legal if you are old enough to know better.    The only difference is the degree to which the more forbidden drugs will speed your on your way to the grave.  Immortal we may feel sometimes, and it's a tough lesson discovering you are not.  Is the transitory sensation on the way there worth it?