Feb 3 2014
I’m not one to fawn over celebrity (well, okay – Mindy Kaling excepting) so my reaction to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death has caught me quite by surprise. I have thought of little else in the last day.
It’s striking to me because in the time I’ve known Scott (hell, in the time we’ve been married) it’s not like PSH is the first celebrity to die of a drug overdose. He’ll join a long list that, during this time, includes actors who I watched years ago, and singers who were part of my life’s soundtrack: Michael Jackson (2009), Health Ledger (2008), Brittany Murphy (2009), Whitney Houston (2012) and Corey Haim (2010).
This emotional response is strange, too, because I barely remember feeling anything except the standard “What a shame”/morbid curiosity regarding the others. And why wouldn’t I? For some of them (Ledger) things hadn’t yet gotten so bad that I could relate his life to that of what I was witnessing in my own. For the others, I was probably so engrossed in my own life that nothing else mattered.
Addiction is all-consuming for both the addict and the family.
Amy Winehouse died while Scott was in treatment and even though I had never paid much attention to her before, I literally watched her video “Rehab” over and over trying to look for…I don’t even know what. Clues? Something that would tell me whether or not Scott might make it?
I never found answers in that video. And honestly, I still haven’t found them in any other part of my life. Sheer luck is what I’ve got so far. Hard work. A desire to change. And sheer luck.
For our entire relationship there have been people (from when we were first dating up through today, even) who attempt to give me credit for changing Scott’s life around. In the beginning, I think I found it flattering. Coming off a failed marriage where everyone questioned my decision-making abilities it was perhaps comforting to think that anything good could be attributed to me. As I have learned more about addiction and recovery, not only do I know that I can’t take the credit for any of Scott’s changes, I don’t want to.
I am in charge of myself and myself alone.
After Scott’s recent (non-serious) surgical procedure, the doctor handed me a prescription for him for Tylenol 3. “Is this Tylenol with Codeine?” I asked. “Yes.” Scott was still a little out of it and he was sitting slightly behind me while we were facing the practitioner, but even through those two barriers, I could hear him hold his breath, his disease awake and hoping, even if just for a moment. I handed the prescription back, but that didn’t stop him from wanting it.
I know it’s tempting for all of us to think that “Oh, yeah. Scott’s done with that life.” and nobody wants to believe that more than I.
But it’s just not true.
This is one of the hardest parts of recovery. An exercise in letting go. In living one day at a time. In not being able to do a damn thing to prevent a relapse.
I am in charge of myself and myself alone.
So while PSH isn’t the first celebrity to die from this horrible disease, he’s the first celebrity to die with 23 years of sobriety under his own belt after Scott’s two and a half years of sobriety.
Relapse after sobriety isn’t worse than active addiction before or without sobriety, but somehow, it just feels like there’s more to lose. We’ve seen the other side and we know it’s better.
And maybe that is why PSH’s death is so frightening to me. It’s bone-chilling to know that not a single addict or alcoholic, even with decades of sobriety, has this thing licked.
That, at any moment, literally any moment at all, Scott could be lost to us, forever.
shaaren pine 