Suffering from Exhaustion?

Warning: My favorite band is having some "issues" and I was a little upset to read about it.

What a damn cliché. Substance abuse for a celebrity initially reported as “suffering from exhaustion.” Who buys this excuse anymore? The industry needs a new word for cokehead. I think we’ve all caught on to this one. And then the statements issued about how brave they are for admitting they have a problem, about wanting to get treatment, and apologizing for disappointing their family, friends, and fans. They didn’t give a shit about any of that while they were snorting coke and guzzling booze. Chances are the effects were starting to become way too obvious and they were about to be exposed anyway. How can these publicists stand their jobs? All they do is lie and spin and then deny and spin some more. What are they doing? Protecting the image of the band? Bulls**t. More like protecting the investment of the record company.

How many times are we going to have to hear the same old stories about a band’s meteoric rise to fame only to burn out because none of them understood how to handle it? It’s every damn episode of Behind The Music, just cut and paste the band name. How can you be a member of society in a developed country and not realize that money and fame and constant adulation will corrupt you if you let it? I don’t understand the need to follow in the long line of (mostly dead) drug addict muscians that came before in the name of experiencing the “Rock N Roll” lifestyle. Exhaustion! Of course he’s exhausted. He’s probably been awake for days.

I know I’m way, way up on my high horse here, but I really don’t understand the allure and dark romance of abusing drugs. Is it really as simple as wanting to do something forbidden? Is it about testing the boundaries of your celebrity status to see what you can get away with? Is it about subscribing to the agreed upon lifestyle of a Rock and Roll celebrity because it is expected? Is it the only way to be considered cool or important to the industry or your peers? Why does becoming a celebrity suddenly make it ok and even anticipated that you will believe all your media hype and all the ego stroking from your Record Company down to your fans ultimately turning into a**holes and taking for granted all the goals you worked so hard to achieve? Why do we hear these stories and call them “classic"? It’s pathetic and a total waste.

It’s not that I don’t understand on a very small scale what having an addiction feels like, or how hard it is to quit something that’s bad for you even when you want to, but somehow I managed to draw the line between sucking on a cancer stick and sticking needles in my arm or pickling my liver with Vodka. Granted, am I the one singing in front of thousands of people for a living, giving endless interviews, circling the globe on an endless merry-go-round of planes, trains, buses, and hotels? No. I didn’t make that choice. They did. The sheer idiocy and selfishness involved in destroying the talent you are being recognized for is completely beyond me.

And what are those brilliant excuses you hear? They started using drugs to:

Stay awake
Go to Sleep
Cope with Stress
Relax
Fit In

Maybe it’s the control freak in me talking here, but I have to believe that I would find another way to alleviate boredom or stress than disassociating with drugs and alcohol. But maybe (and I’m stretching here), I am looking at it the wrong way and it really is about control. It’s about taking control of the one thing left to them in their highly managed, overly exposed, relentlessly driven lives: their bodies. Perhaps they don’t get to make decisions about their touring schedule, but by God, they can decide how they are going to party every night of that tour.

Regardless of the excuse, guess what? It’s a bad decision. And it was all yours to make. You suck. Even though I want him to recover and be healthy (and grow the f**k up), I am always going to feel disappointed that he went down that road in the first place. Now he's just like everyone else.