RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman — Page 3

Good lord, what is wrong with the Times? Linking to intrusive pap photos from the Daily Mail? Finding the one woman at the airport who knows him only as "the actor with three names" and a TSA agent happy to criticize his belly?

Let's not even get into the quotes from the NA attendees.

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There is addiction on one side of my family that feels so scarily predetermined for the men in the family. I really hate the ignorance and lack of empathy people have on this. Kristen Johnson's response to this is incredibly spot-on. Her book, Guts, also explores her own personal addiction. It's an everyday battle in recovering and yes, that even after decades of being clean it can put you back in is absolutely frightening to think about.

I also want to recommend a Norwegian film by Joachim Trier called Oslo, August 31st. It's about a recovering addict's shame and guilt over what he has done. It's an incredibly humane portrait that I revisited and it hit me harder in the context of Philip Seymour Hoffman. It **was** on Netflix Instant but appears not to be anymore. A shame. I think it is a film that would be helpful to people who have too many preconceived notions of addicts.

There's a line of addiction that runs through my mother's father's line; at least one child in every family suffers from it (but never all the children). I never suffered from it, but my brother and several aunts, uncles, and cousins do. Some of them overcame it, some don't. There always comes a terrible time when the family has to turn away from the ones who don't overcome the problem (always very late, after everything has been tried to help, several times); the only alternative to is be drawn down with the addict inexorably into a never-ending morass of suffering, violence, lying, robbery, etc.

I can't say that there are some who are constitutionally/physically/mentally absolutely unable to make the choice to change (which is the currently embraced theory, but who knows what tomorrow's theory will be?); all I know is that some do and some don't.

Updated On: 2/7/14 at 11:35 AM