Another One

I rarely comment on pop culture.  Not because I don’t follow it, but because I’m mostly bored by the travails and triumphs of the famous kind.  Except for Meryl Streep.  She’s a goddess. I still read People magazine and I always check out the entertainment section of any news.  I so don’t care who Jennifer Aniston is dating.  Leave the poor girl alone and let her date.  I am interested in fashion but not in their politics.  I’m a moviephile, but I don’t care of their lives outside of the characters they play.  Again, except for Meryl Streep.

Having said all that, I read Whitney Houston died and felt that pang of sadness.  I know the world mourns the loss of her talent.  It’s tragic that someone who seems to have had it all at her fingers could become a victim of her addictions.  We do not know the cause of death yet, but everyone is holding their breath just knowing it’s drug related.  Having a mother who is a full blown addict (even though she thinks a prescription means it’s not addiction), we’re always waiting for the time she takes an extra pill or increases her intake from three pain pills and three anti-depressants a day to an overdose or worse.  I consulted an addiction specialist who advised me to mourn her as if she’s already passed.  He assured me that unless she’s willing to seek treatment, there is absolutely nothing I can do but to demand her sobriety or I am no longer in her life.  So my sister and I did it.  Now, we just wait for the phone call.

I have sympathy for anyone who is beholden to addiction.  It really isn’t a switch that can be shut off.  It’s devastating not only to the people around them, but to themselves.  I don’t believe in rock bottom, I believe it’s so much lower than that.  I can’t imagine what my mother goes through every day in order to medicate herself to the point of comfort.  I don’t believe it’s a choice she makes any longer.  But there is a choice to get help.  When your family and friends beg you to go into rehab, you are making a choice not to.  Of course, she isn’t making decisions with a sober mind, but I do believe she sees the destruction she’s caused to those around her and no longer cares.

Yet, as I read Whitney Houston passed away, I thought about those Powell boys who were murdered by their father.  That really is a true tragedy.  They were innocent and subjected to their father’s evil.  Who knows what talents they might have possessed or what they might have contributed to the world.  It will never be known now.

I just remember shaking my head when Amy Winehouse drank herself to death.  Just another in a long list of talented, famous people who succumb to their addictions.  So, after watching the train wreck Whitney Houston became (and it was like watching a train wreck if you ever saw her reality show), she’s added to that list.  I often wonder what it’s going to take to convince these troubled minds to live to a ripe old age.