Not your typical breakdown

Marilyn: ‘I sat in a room for 20 years, taking crack and watching the Alien films’ | Music | The Guardian

I have the vaguest memory of the minor pop celebrity Marilyn in the 1980's (although I hasten to point out I didn't even care for Culture Club and Boy George's music, let alone this guy's.) But, there's no doubt, his account of what he did for 20 years following a nervous breakdown is so odd you'd find it hard to believe in a movie:

He retreated to his mother’s house in Hertfordshire and stayed there for 20 years, “without going out, unless it was to the hospital or a dealer, or a doctor. But in general I just sat in a room for 20 years. I didn’t want contact with people. The phone would ring and I just wouldn’t pick it up. The curtains were always drawn, I didn’t know whether it was night or day.”

What did he do all day? “You know the Alien movies? I had the box set of that. I had my laptop and my drug paraphernalia was all set up around me. And I’d watch the first Alien film, then the second, then the third, fourth, fifth. And when it got to the end of the fifth one, I’d put the first one back on again. So that was it. Over and over again. It was, like, my life has gone out of control, but I can control this, this tiny little bubble of behaviour: that was my safety, sitting in front of this computer screen with what I’m watching, and I know all the dialogue
and I know what’s going to happen. I could control how I felt. ‘Oh, I’m bit tired, let me have some crack. Oh, I’m a bit depressed, let’s have some heroin. I need to go to sleep, I’ll take a downer.’ I just wanted to die, but I couldn’t do that, I think because I was brought up a
Catholic, with that idea that if you kill yourself you go to purgatory. I kept thinking, ‘Well, it’ll be just my ****ing luck, I’ll kill myself and wake up in exactly the situation I’m trying to get away from and it’ll be for eternity.’ At least I know this is going to end at some point.”

 He's OK now, though, so all's well that ends well; or something like that, I guess....

Update:  I see from comments at The Guardian (not as witty as I hoped in this case) that many are skeptical about how a one (minor) hit wonder had enough money to fund a 20 year drug habit.  Quite true.  It could all be a tall story.