printDuring an hour-long interview with CNN”s Piers Morgan, Charlie Sheen had some choice words for the addiction industry (Sheen’s clearly an enemy of the Industry.) I loved every minute of it.
SHEEN: “I’ve been around them for 22 years. And they’ve been lying to me for two decades. … I’m a winner and their lives look like they’re — you know, ruled by losers. Just to put it in black and white terms. I don’t want their lives, and they want mine, but they want to criticize the hell out of it. … I don’t believe myself to be an addict. I really don’t. I think that I just ignore or smash or finally dismiss a model that I think is rooted in vintage balderdash, you know? For lack of a better word.”
Lovely.
And about the busybody public Sheen said this: “I wish people would shift that focus on to themselves and their own family and their own friends and just maybe spend a little more time on their home front.” [Transcripts.]
Watch out: The Shamans will be furious. Haven’t the likes of Drs. Keith Ablo and Drew Pinsky labored to create lucrative niches for themselves in the media by medicalizing all manner of misbehavior?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders started out with some 60 categories of disorders (not diseases). It now sports hundreds for which a biological origin is asserted (with little scientific backing). Good for Sheen for copping only to being a bad boy, not a sick boy in need of the ministrations of prissy prohibitionists.
From “Mel’s Malady, Foxman’s Fetish”:
The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency (the “experts”) have slapped all manner of misconduct with diagnostic labels. At the root of this diseasing of behavior is the eradication of good and bad. Placing bad behavior beyond the strictures of traditional morality, moreover, makes it amenable to external, “therapeutic” or state interventions.
Liberals first, and conservatives in short succession, have taken to the idiom of disease like ducks to water. Left and right now insist, based on wispy pseudoscience, that just about every human excess is an illness as organic as cancer or diabetes.
A teacher who seduces her underage pupil has to be “sick,” or else she’d not have indulged her fantasies. The same post hoc illogic is applied to the morbidly obese: if you overeat, you’re diseased!
Are you a dad who dotes on his kids when they are around, but fails to mail them child support money when they return to mom? There’s a Harvard professor by the name of Dr. John Ratey who’ll cheerily diagnose you with “Environmental Dependency Disorder”: you remember your kids only when they are present.
And so it goes: the arsonist has “pyromania,” the thief is inflicted with “kleptomania,” and Bill Clinton is not promiscuous, but a “sex-addict.”
From “Addictions Are About Behavior, Not Disease”:
“When it comes to thinking about addiction, opinions converge. Having bought into the addiction industry’s mantra, so-called social progressives and conservatives alike share the same ideological hangover from the Prohibition era, with a twist of AA sadism: all are religious about abstinence, and all accept as bible from Sinai the wisdom of coercing addicts into treatment regimens. But perhaps the greatest error made in the attempt at humane formulations about addiction is to cast as a disease what is essentially a problem of behavior. …
“The rationale for using the disease model to describe addiction even though it is intellectually dishonest is that medical treatment is effective. Yet another deception. An overview of controlled studies indicates that ‘treated patients do not fare better than untreated people with the same problems.’ Of note is a 4500-subject-strong 1996 US epidemiological study conducted by the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiological Survey. Treated alcoholics, it was found, were more heavily alcohol dependent on average than untreated alcoholics. Clearly a behavioral problem cannot be remedied by medical intervention. Addicts are cured when they decide to give up the habit.”
I don’t watch Sheen’s television. But as far as bucking a treatment industry that relies, for the most, on coercing addicts into rehabilitation—I say, Shine on Sheen, You Crazy Diamond.
UPDATE: Contemplationist: Dr. Thomas Szasz is a friend who is featured on these (BAB’s) pixelated pages. Do search for his articles under “BAB’s A List.” Tom has provided praise for my new book, to be released on May 10, 2011. Sign-up for my newsletter, befriend me on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter for updates.
I don’t find Charlie Sheen to be a role model, but I admit that next to Frasier, 2 and a Half Men is my favourite sitcom of all time.
The guy is a dingbat. The people he is dealing with are dingbats. Anybody who actually watches their programs are at least apprentice dingbats. As Bugs Bunny would say “What a bunch of maroons”. (Here I am calling Charlie Sheen a dingbat and quoting Bugs Bunny at the same time.)
[Welcome back; Huggs.]
Addiction, behavior, biology… whatever… this whole thing was really all about money. He wanted out of his contract so he could renegotiate. And, he didn’t care if he ever made another episode of 2.5men if things went badly. My guess is he’s got plenty of money, he’s tired of doing what everyone tells him to do, and he knows everythings going to shit – RSN.
GOOD FOR HIM. Sigma’s Unite! 🙂
Although I have seen only a few television sound-bites of the recent Charlie Sheen interviews, I would guess that the Establishment intention is to completely discredit Sheen by portraying him as a lunatic, and thus discredit his political beliefs, including presumably his belief that the US Government was the source of the 9-11 terror attacks, which 9-11 conspiracy happens to be about the only thing that I agree about with Charlie Sheen, although the establishment news media seems to be in its usual 9-11 conspiracy coverup mode, similar to the coverup about Tucson shooter Jared’s belief about the 9-11 Government conspiracy, although again Jared is portrayed in the media as a lunatic. Is there a pattern here? Anyone with anti-establishment beliefs are automatically lunatics? Similar to the lying establishment propaganda that all political assassins are lone-nuts, despite overwhelming evidence of Government conspiracy in some cases, such as the assassination of President Kennedy, as the most obvious, although other US political assassination cases also suggest conspiracy.
Excellent! Perhaps you could plug the man who pioneered Psychiatry skepticism – Dr. Thomas Szasz. When I take over as ruler of the world, I will abolish all Psychiatric departments and make Szasz essential reading for all medical students.
From my viewing of Charlie Sheen’s antics, I think he over-indulges in anything that hits his fancy, and since he can well afford it, and still has his health, he will continue to do so until it affects him adversely. He seems to be ranting at times, but he looks like he never sleeps, and being terribly promiscuous, no wonder. He strikes me as a very selfish person, but he’s harming no one else I can see; it’s his right to live the way he wishes to as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s. This is America after all, Life Liberty and The Persuit of Happiness (even if you get an STD doing it)!
“Anyone with anti-establishment beliefs are automatically lunatics?”
The Tuscon shooter shot and killed a 9 year old girl. I don’t care if people consider him crazy, but he is evil, plain and simple.
As far as 9-11 conspiracies go, it’s hard to put any crime past the government these days but 9-11 was perpetrated by Islamic radicals and celebrated across the Islamic world. Pretending that the government did it distracts from the fact that The West, Orthodox Christendom, and Israel (which is a strange and beautiful middle ground between the two aforementioned groups) faces an existential threat from the Islamic world. Sheen and his fellow nutcases try to blame Mossad for the crimes of our civilizational enemies. It’s blood libel as far as I’m concerned.
But, as far as cocaine and prostitutes go… while I frown on both I recognize his right to indulge and wish the government would as well!
Ilana,
I’m sorry to double post but I feel the need to clarify. When I said that Israel is a middle ground I am simply recognizing that Israelis are drawn from Jews of various descents. Israelis have the engineering skills of the Germans with the resilience of the Russians and the political savvy of Anglo-Saxons. So I would categorize Israel as part of The West but Israel has at least one foot in the old world of Eastern Europe. (This is one of the many reasons why I love Israel!)
As far as conspiracy theories go, far too many of them are rehashings of old antisemitic propaganda that date back to the Czarist era and the Protocols of The Elders of Zion. I’ve heard Charlie Sheer and his buddy Alex Jones talk about “dancing Israelis” in New York after 9-11. This is completely fabricated horse-feces. It was so well fabricated that it is republished so widely that is accepted as fact among 9-11 “truthers” like Sheen. It feeds into the absurd notion that Jews sew the seeds of international conflict, which is an absurd but widely repeated notion especially in the Arab world and unfortunately in Europe as well today.
That’s one of my favorite songs.
No matter how dislikable Sheen may be, at least he has a bit of a backbone…more than could be said for the coelenterates permeating our “society”.
In a disgusting world where the ‘big people’ have to put down the ‘little people’ with condescending messages to be ate up by the socially active tabloids. Mr. Sheen is a breath of fresh air. Well, maybe not fresh but at least honest.