Oh, You Poor, Poor Thang

If this image appears blurry to you, perhaps you need to lay off the weed/crack/booze.

So a couple of days ago, I saw an article about how one of the 33 Chilean miners who got rescued in 2010 after a gazillion days of being trapped almost 2300 feet underground has “suffered” from alcoholism and drug addiction since he’s been back on terra firma. Boo hoo. Oh, how awful that the miner had to go through such a horrible experience! And now the poor dear will have to deal with all the extra attention and money he’s going to make in the sea of celebrity where talk-show sharks can smell the blood of recovery for miles.

I know. Many times, people suddenly inundated with unusual money and attention blow through it like a supermodel with an eight-ball of nose groceries and a straw. But what kills me is that anyone—especially anyone who has been poor since birth—would think, Heyyyyyy. Lots and lots of money! The first thing I’m going to do is buy super addictive substances that fuck up my brain! Does it matter that said previously-impoverished’s children walk around in something-stained, infant-sized t-shirts that leave their pee-pees exposed, and they’ve never had shoes, and they have pet flies? Perhaps the sight of their tiny beer bellies (because they are starving) provided a subliminal suggestion. Whatev. The truth is that no one ever, ever touches drugs unless he or she is a completely fucking selfish shitforbrains because when was the last time a bender or a visit to the crack house on the corner turned into anything positive?

Everyone knows that there is an enormous probability that introducing drugs into one’s system will result in a dependency that compels the addict to seek more and more and more of the high, so to hell with jobs and families and communities and stability and society and the law. One hit, one shot, one snort all mean the same thing: Fuck everybody and everything but me. The only thing important to me is me.

So. I have a terribly hard time feeling sorry for the motherfuckers who become addicts. I apologize to the .00000000000000000000000000001 percent of the addicted population who got hooked by force. If there are any junkies reading, and you were held at gun- or knifepoint, or your loved ones were threatened in any way if you didn’t take that first toke or whatever, please accept my heartfelt plea for forgiveness. You got a bum rap.

But alllllllll other drugwhores, you can’t have my sympathy. I will not weep while you pour out your drug-addled heart to Tinseltown pimps. You may have truly suffered, but you asked for it. You started it. No one said you had to. Cocaine or heroin or crack or alcohol addiction is not in any way comparable to the suffering of any other disease. You aren’t recovering from having a brain tumor removed or from the agony of chemotherapy-laced veins. You aren’t hairless and fragile and sterile because the only way to prolong your life was to poison your body. You poor, sick fuck. Your suffering was a choice.

Isn’t it time that those of us who have elected to eschew drugs in the first place or even those of you who have kicked the habit and should know better, quit doling out our attention to the wretched, whining wimps who are simply looking for another high? They have only replaced the addiction to drugs with the addiction to sympathy and book-signings. We need to stop behaving like drug addicts—celebrity or otherwise—have done something noble. Stop buying their tell-alls. Stop labeling them “inspirations.” And as for that Chilean miner, if he wants to wind up underground permanently because he doesn’t give a shit about anything but himself, then let’s not dig him up this time.