Cynthia Heimel lived in New York in the 1970s and she knew actors and artists before their fame—while they were still bussing tables and driving cabs—but she also knew them after their fame. She wrote this:

I pity celebrities. No I really do. Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Barbara Streisand were once perfectly pleasant human beings. But now their wrath is awful. I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you, he grants you your deepest wish and giggles merrily when you realize you want to kill yourself.

You see, Sly, Bruce and Barbara wanted fame. They worked, they pushed, and the morning after each of them became famous, they wanted to take an overdose. Because that giant thing they were striving for, that something that was going to make everything okay, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness, had happened. And they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable. (Cynthia Heimel, The Village Voice, January 2, 1990)

 “The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.” With these words, Heimel drives a dagger into the center of the human heart. We all desperately desire things, and yet their fulfillment fails to fully satisfy.

The western world—and especially the USA—is experiencing an explosion of devastating addictions. We witness the destruction of families, lives, and careers—all on account of these compulsive and seemingly unconquerable obsessions.

But hidden addictions—of equal ruining intensity—conceal deep dangers that these chemical dependencies point to. Continue Reading…