Philip Seymour Hoffman found dead

hey thats great

Once a junkie always a junkie

Once a drunk always a drunk

Once an addicted always an addict

The difference between someone like Robert Downey JR and Hoffman is that, so far, Downey has figured out how to control the urge, so far. When you are an addict the desire to do the bad thing never fully goes away. You learn to deal with it. You develop tools to put it on the back burner so you can live your life. You may go weeks, months or even years without the urge, then one idle Tuesday you encounter something that sets off one of your triggers and you need to cope with it and make the choice not to use or to seek help to keep you from doing whatever the addiction is.

Downey's recovery wasn't some simple overnight thing. He was in and out of rehab several times before finally getting clean.

Is it a choice to do these things? Sure. Nobody starts drinking or using drugs with the intent to become a hopeless addict that one day overdoses. When Hoffman shot heroin into his arm did he intend to kill himself? Likely not, but only he knows for sure. Kicking addiction is not an easy thing. At its most simple, once you are clean it is making the choice to stay clean, but for many the desire to give into the addiction is so compelling it is hard for them to say no to it. Hoffman is a perfect example of this. He had a ton of money, a great career, a family and what would appear to be a very good life, yet he still couldn't kick this problem. It is a choice, but it is complex one.

I've kicked addiction to prescription pills, it took me 4 years. I'm speaking from personal experience in recovery. And since then I've drank alcohol, smoked weed, snorted blow and snorted and smoked meth and walked away from it all without having to pin the responsibility on the chemical. Addicts use what you are claiming as an excuse all the time. OH, I'm an addict, I'll always be one so pass me the rig.

Most all of us have shit we have to overcome to survive, putting the onus on the shit we cling to takes away the personal responsibility

Self control people! Don't get too excited and od ffs. Too many people around that care.Rip Seymour

Lol @ stickyfingerz... The guy has a VERY public meltdown over a teenage meth addict on this very forum, complaining among other things that he deserved her love because he bought her new teeth.... and wants to debate drug laws.

I would guess then that you are not a true addict.

People get hooked on prescription pills all the time. It is easy to do. Many people also get off of them. I know someone who got hooked on Nyquill then realized what they were doing and stopped doing it.

Someone who has a true addictive personality has a very difficult time controlling their use of whatever their drug of choice is. More than that they tend to focus that addiction in one way or another. A friend of mine was on some pretty hard drugs for several years. He tried a few times and eventually he got clean by focusing his energy on working out. Of course he couldn't just go to the gym for 30 minutes a day, he quickly became addicted to it and would go 3 hours a day. Now he works in the fitness industry so it all worked out for him. He has told me that he fears if he ever stopped working out he would focus that addictive personality towards something else and it could be be bad.

I'm not taking the personal responsibility away from it. I am simply saying for many addicts is a far more complex situation than just one day saying they are no longer going to do whatever the bad thing is. Theirs is a problem of regulation. They can't just have one drink or smoke one joint or do a little coke at a party. If they have one drink they will end up having 10 because the desire to do that overshadows everything else.

Like I said. It is a choice. Once a person is clean they can choose to give themselves the tools to deal with the urges when they come. When they fall off the wagon it isn't an excuse that they make up just because they wanted to get high, it is because they were weak and they let the desire to do this thing overcome them. They made a bad choice.

i'm happy you have discovered omniscience & that your life experience entitles you to speak for every addict in the human race.

the fact that you think a oscar winning millionaire actor "chose" to die demonstrates your ignorance/unwillingness to put yourself in anyone elses shoes. as long as you are so strong, everyone else is wrong. dumb dumb dumb dumb.

& you should stop conflating responsibility with choice. addicts are responsible for their actions & the consequences. But their power to choose is dramatically broken, to the point of choosing to use over every other healthier alternative.

addictive personality is a theory. One I don't subscribe to whatsoever.

Fair enough.

lolz, yup I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of someone worth $150 million dollars that has enough talent to win an oscar and has legions of fans yets chooses to inject lethal quantities of hard drugs. No sympathy or empathy at all from me for hard dopers.

They choose their path to clean up or not.

he's not an addict. He's a fucking moron who thinks he knows it all. he can find out he is flat wrong, but he never will make the effort to walk into a prison or a rehab & talk to a heroin junkie & tell them in their face they coulda chose. he knows he would get his ass beat.

I believe it.

My youngest brother is an addictive personality.

He's an alcoholic, addicted to prescription pills, cigarettes, you name it. If he tries it he will get addicted to it.

It's the reason that 99.99% of the people can get wasted on alcohol, cocaine, pot, etc. on the weekend and then not touch it again until the next time they decide to go out and party.

But a tiny percentage of people get hooked on it. Those are the ones with addictive personalities

Don't think that there aren't people out there who are like that. There are. Every alcoholic in the world. Every person hooked on prescription drugs. Every person who every got addicted to heroin.

They aren't a big percentage of people. But they do get all the publicity and ruin a good party for the rest of us. lol

By the way, congrats to you on kicking your addictions. I played in bands most of my life and saw quite a few of my buddies die from alcoholism (livers went bad). And I had to fire a lot of guys in my band for getting hooked on stupid shit like crack and meth that pretty much rendered them useless on the road.

I've never had that kind of addictive personality about anything. I've never tried heroin...so I can't speak on that. lol
But I drank my first beer when I was 12, smoked my first joint the same year. Did my first line when I was 19. First hit of acid at 20.

Never had a problem with any of them. Can take it or leave it. I still won't have a drink at my own home or anywhere that isn't a party or a bar or some other social activity.

I might drink 3 or 4 times a month. And I can't remember the last time I drank to excess.
If I do any recreational type party favors, it might be once every couple of months or so. And then ONLY on a weekend night when I have a hotel room and decide to burn off some steam.

But some people aren't like that at all.

They can't stop after a few drinks. They have to drink until they pass out.
They can't stop after a couple of lines....they have to do it all and then find more.
They can't just take a pain pill when they are experiencing excruciating pain and then not take any more...they have to do them all and then go "doctor shopping" to get several prescriptions from different doctors.

But you are 100% right in my opinion about it being a personal decision.

I've never understood all these busybodies who think THEY know what's best for YOU.
Fuck them! lol

hahah, so you resort to making it personal and calling me names for clearly stating my views.

I've spent more time with convicts and felons in a weekend than I care to admit. I mentioned earlier I went through rehab, including a roomie who was a junkie cutter. I lived in a halfway house with peeps who used meth so bad they only had roots for teeth. FTR, I've sponsored more than 10 recovering junkies in sobriety, And that's 10 out of 50+ men I sponsored in recovery. And I told each and every one of them that recovery is their choice. Just like using.

Addiction fucking sucks.

Anybody ever see the film "Love Liza" -- it was from a while back.

Hoffman played a guy whose wife killed herself.

He couldn't bring himself to read the suicide note and the whole movie was basically him stumbling around, sniffing airplane glue and gasoline fumes. As I remember it, he takes up RC boat racing as an excuse to buy model boat fuel that he can huff with a rag.

Good movie and -- now -- really gives me the creeps on a different level.

I'm not against it per se. If there was conclusive research that proved it undeniably, I would certainly embrace that. As it stands, there are 2 big problems with it- 1, it's a label and labeling people doesn't help matters. 2, it's an easy excuse that addicts can cling to in order to justify their personal decisions to keep using.