addictions as status symbols, C/D?

Personally, I don't think cool or not-cool even enters the equation when talking about addiction. It's like saying "Mental Illness: Cool or Not-Cool". It just doesn't compute.

It's fucking sad and terrible when you see something that destroys people - like addiction or any other form of mental illness. Yet it's also inspiring and yes, "Cool" when you see someone overcome that illness and rise above it.

I didn't see "cool" or idealising addiction expressed anywhere in Suzy's posts or mine. I saw two snide people making sarcastic comments because of their own assumptions about our attitudes based on their preconceptions of us.

The hatred on that thread wasn't even about addiction - it was "We hate the cool kids cause the cool kids talk about 16 year old heroin addicts, so therefore they *clearly* idealise heroin!"

It's really hard to idealise heroin or have any kind of "status symbol" attitude towards drugs and addiction after you've seen people destroyed by it.

Pot, kettle, etc., etc.

Your words, asstwat, not mine.

I am really getting angry now. Woo, you've succeeded with your snideness, you've REALLY hurt and upset someone. Don't you feel like a big boy now?

weak metabolism, not emotionally weak, whatever.

Okay, fine, addicts need help/support, I'll give it to 'em to a certain extent (ie I won't let a junky play me). They don't need my sympathy, however, when they knew knew knew exactly what they were getting into, and were too fucking arrogant to think that, uh, the laws of chemistry applied to them.

i was talking about horace.

and, hey, don't let it grate, kate.

i always struggled to get why something as destructive as heroin could possibly be cool, how there could even be the phrase 'heroin chic', how something that turns people into what it does, could have any cultural currency. i still struggle with that idea now, you know, i think, if i ever did something like that i would hide it, i'd be embarrassed, ashamed. but would i? if i was in a position where i wanted to do it, then i probably wouldnt be so embarrassed at all, because i would have already made half the journey there

so, is it the difference between use and addiction. can heroin use be cool, while addiction is not? it doesnt strike me as much different, maybe its the addiction part that enthralls us, turn it round, maybe the glamourising of it isn't "this person is weakened and addicted to something that is killing them", but "this person is under the power of something massive", like they are wired into a seam of something, and personal responsibility is not there, they become like primeval or something, i mean this is something that has been part of the rock'n'roll glamourization/mythology since like year dot.

giving yourself up, worshipping, laying yourself open, higher cause, something out of the self, heroin as religion. its the fervency and the gospel similarities maybe, i'm not sure, it is something i am trying to get head around

also, sometimes people beat drugs and alcohol and end up dead anyway

in fact, they all do

Anyway... there is this glamourisation of things which are dangerous - good old Freudian death-urge or whatever. Death is sexy and cool, and even addiction and mental illness (and I think the parallels are quite clear, dig up any of Doomie et al.'s old threads about the fetishisation of mental illness and/or drug addiction in 60s icons and Creation Records types) are perceived as being part of that myth.

I'm not saying that's how I feel, I'm saying that this is a common myth. It's also one that upsets me greatly, and I'm not sure that I can continue talking on this thread in the mood and heightened state of sensitivity that I am feeling right now.

i think its that freedom that we fetishize in drug-addiction; not the strength of the monster but the sheer risk and de-emphasis of life required to throw oneself to it in the first place

the first one is a well worn discussion theme of course, but the second, addiction (regardless of substance) is interesting. its a more general "loss of control" than a simple "i was so out of it last night", but the concept of not having control over your own life, kind of a negation of personal responsibility. this is endlessly fascinating to me, because i couldnt imagine being in such a position, or thinking it a good idea.

i think there is a certain vicariousness to the idea, others get addicted and live messed up lives so *we* dont have to, can live it by proxy.

often, sports people talk about being "in the zone" when they are in a good vein of form, and i wonder if its sort of like that. the idea that when we are really on form we are not ourselves, but something else has taken over. the locus of control as external.

maybe it really is the idea of not having to make decisions, of being on autopilot?

ah, just read your last bit mark before posting. yes, i like this idea, the walking of the tightrope, the danger below, but also the desire to fall. vertigo is the actual desire to fall isnt it i think?

http://www.handsomeproductions.com/lesterbangs.htm

Here's my angle though (in hopes of showing I'm not a stone-cold Ayn Rand hard-ass): A couple of old friends have recently (through work-related circumstances) become regulars in my day-to-day life again. They are both not-quite trust-funders, but their parents have paid for everything along their way to get them to essentially the same position I have had to really, really bust my ass for.
They both glamourize their own hard drug-use and use it as (nearly sole) proof of how bad-ass/transgressive/rockaroll they are. One of them recently discovered that her husband is HIV+ (from IV drug use), and has boldly declared that she will not make ANY lifestyle changes.
So, whatever. That's my truck.