Wednesday, December 28, 2016

I want Spielberg taken to a secure location until 1 January

So, the 2016 terrible run of relatively early deaths of entertainers who a lot of people liked continues, with Carrie Fisher dying today.   She was, apparently, very likeable in person; but to be honest, I didn't follow her post Star Wars career all that closely.  (Didn't read any of her autobiographic books, or see the movie based on the first one, for example.)

There is much speculation on Reddit and the like that she may well have had heart trouble due to her earlier years of cocaine and alcohol abuse.   Seems a reasonable guess.  Google shows me that she was a smoker, too, both when young and even quite recently.  I also see she said she started smoking marijuana at 13 - probably well before it was so well recognised that using it at such a young age is the most dangerous time for developing serious mental health issues.   Again, one of those cases where it's hard to know whether the drug use led to the problems for which she later "self medicated" with more drugs.

As for her later disclosures of drug use - I assume she didn't seek to glamorise it at all, but there is always the worry that any reformed drug abuser who talks too much about their past use inadvertently signals to some people that it's OK to overuse it for a while because they will be able to recover, after having their youthful fun.  However, given that I don't really know how she wrote or talked about it, I don't know whether she ever had that effect or not.

I see this morning that there is increasing speculation that George Michael had gotten back into serious drugs (heroin) in the last year.

And although it seems his death was accidental, pain killing drugs were behind Prince's death too.

So, while all of this deaths have saddened many, many fans, I hope at least that some people, particularly the young, are taking some lessons about drug abuse from them.

1 comment:

not trampis said...

fantastic in the Blues Brothers