In my last article, I lamented how people saw Whitney Houston deteriorating but no one really took the bull by the horns and made her get help. A friend responded that you just can’t help someone who either doesn’t want it or won’t help themselves. They also said that mandatory holds in a psychiatric facility are difficult to justify and wouldn’t have done much good. You can lead a horse to counseling, but you can’t make him relate. To that I say: ‘Dem’s fightin’ words! The gauntlet has been thrown down. OK, I say, the following is my stance.
In general, what makes people continue in self-destructive behavior? Very simple. It feels so good at the moment that they don’t consider, nor do they care about, the long-term harmful consequences. How do you influence them to change it? Show them something better. Kids don’t eat their vegetables because they don’t taste as good as candy. So, we flavor them up. With sugar and fat, you ask, which makes something delicious? No, that creates more problems? How about some delicious spices and maybe a lo-cal sauce? A win-win situation.
What makes someone use drugs and alcohol? It feels good. Duh! Actually, more to the point, it feels better than the alternative, which is pain. Think of it as self-medicating. If a problem makes you unhappy in life or feel bad, a drink or a smoke may not make it go away, but we feel better and it doesn’t hurt. People in high stress jobs will either drink or take prescription drugs to help them cope. In moderation this may work, but problems begin when the job starts becoming less important and the “high” starts becoming more important.
The disease theory of chemical addiction highlights the fact that chemically dependent people start out with brains that are deficient in certain neurotransmitters in certain sections of the brain that make them feel bored. I’ve seen films where they do a brain scan of an addict’s brain the colors indicate what I’ve discussed. I also worked with substance abusers and saw how they deal with things. This is similar to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. People with ADHD have to keep stimulating themselves to relieve that uncomfortable feeling of things are too slow. The substances chemically alleviate those feelings. The drugs make them feel good. And you want them to give that up?
Of course, substance abuse creates other problems. People tend to drop out of life and lose their positive influences as well as ways to support themselves because the drugs make them feel so good that’s all they want to do. When you stack up the uncomfortable feelings against the drugs that make you feel good, guess which is going to win? Of course, a lot of us like to take a chemical vacation every now and then, but most of us the discipline to not make it a way of life.
It’s the same with emotional issues. Someone who has an anxiety disorder doesn’t like to be anxious. Prescription pills help. Sometimes they help too much. What’s so bad about feeling good?
Unless there’s a very evident physiological cause, a lot of the abuse can be due to emotional issues. Perhaps the physiological basis is self-inflicted; the person has problems, they drink to forget, want to keep forgetting so they keep drinking. The body becomes used to drinking and they get lazy about dealing with the actual problem by actually dealing with the problem. They feel good by drinking or doing drugs, but not only doesn’t the problem go away, but now we have a new problem of alcoholism or drug addiction.
This may be the reason that some addicts and alcoholics can’t seem to stay sober. They go into a program, give up their drug of choice, and the problems remain. They are basically doing what we call white knuckling it. They still have the problems that makes them feel bad, but now they also don’t have the substance to make them feel good. Eventually, the combination of the craving and issues get the better of them and they go back to using.
The fix then is obviously to help them develop coping skills to deal with the issues while finding some type of mechanism to help them deal with the anxiety of not only the problem, but also the fact that they no longer have a crutch. 12 step groups have done a great job of support for the latter. What’s missing, in my humble opinion, is counseling to help deal with problems in a more effective way.
A lot has been said about Whitney post-mortem. I have seen news and talk shows in which they discuss the stress she was under being a high-profile person in the entertainment business. We are constantly being treated to stories of which celebrity is in rehab. In fact, there is even a show about it! Only in America!
We have seen celebrities, especially a lot of music personalities who make a career out of going to rehab. Some of them have been called “bad boys” who just like to party too much. They get very successful, make a ton of money, and spend it on, among other things, drugs. They feed their addiction. Then they go to rehab. Then they go out, stay sober for a while—maybe—and start all over again. And of course it affects us commoners as well. There are people who aren’t famous who are in and out of rehab. Many of them go broke and alienate family and friends in the process.
Obviously, something’s not being done. Obviously, something’s not being addressed. Is it because they’re famous and mental health staff is intimidated? Is it because their repeated visits help pay the mortgage? Is the staff missing something?
What I submit they’re missing is the root issue. They are not addressing the problems. Sure they’re addressing the drug part and acknowledging the stress, I’ll give you that. Are they really, however, getting down to it?
People are hesitant to confront their issues. It hurts to feel all those emotions. We don’t want to acknowledge that emotions can hurt us because then we’ve admitted that we’re weak. Being weak means there goes the self-esteem, and we need to protect that at all costs.
In my humble opinion, someone who needed multiple trips to rehab had some pretty serious issues that weren’t addressed. This is where confrontation comes in, and consider that confrontation is act of grace. I’m thinking that she needed someone to put her where she had to stay, where someone would sit down and get in her face in a nice, supportive way. She needed someone who could hold her hand and lead her through the hell that we call self-discovery. She needed someone who would let her know in no uncertain terms that not only was it OK to admit that there were some things that had a hold on her, but it was necessary and valiant to address them. Then, help her address them and show her better ways to deal with things. And this goes for anybody in that situation.
You know what? Maybe she needed a vacation from being Whitney Houston. Maybe she needed to just go back home and forget the music business for a while. Now this is a luxury most of us don’t have. We can’t just give up a life for any amount of time and just chill. We can, however, make certain changes in our lifestyle. We can take more vacations or find some relaxing activities, meet new people, have a bake sale, whatever. The point is, many of us need to learn better ways to solve problems and get some positive influences in our lives to help us manage our lives better.
I still believe she could have been saved. I believe Michael Jackson could have been saved, and Amy Winehouse, and Elvis Presley and Karen Carpenter and Marilyn Monroe. Just sayin’.
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