The Elixir Was His Poison
Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Romanticization of Addiction
Human lives are extinguished every day by addiction. A rush of booze down the throat, a blast of heroin to the veins. This most recent instance—Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death—has caught our attention, in part, because of what must inevitably follow: the impossibility of further contribution, an irrevocable void of talent, a deafening silence. His life was public and bright like a star; so, too, does his death shimmer with collective sadness.
Many have voiced their own experiences of Hoffman and of addiction. Helpful stories and narratives are being shared. But there is one version of the facts we should be wary about, a version captured by Lee Siegel in the New Yorker. Siegel writes:
Much will probably be written in the coming days about addiction, and about how much more Hoffman could have done if only he had kept the poison out of his life—and that is true, to an extent…But the brute, ugly fact might also be that the poison was his elixir. It could be that Hoffman belonged to that small group of artists who have an arrangement with their demons…Or, to put it another way: without the need to flee from pain by transfiguring it, you would not have the energy to endure the suffering, the solitude, and the uncertainty that are part and parcel of artistic expression.
This narrative romanticizes a deadly disease. Aside from its recklessness, it’s also unsophisticated and inaccurate and Siegel’s acknowledgment — “This comes dangerously close, I know, to the banal romantic notion that all genuine artists must suffer”—doesn’t do (or un-do) enough.
Many artists are tortured. Siegel is right that “the link between suffering and creativity seems less romantic than pragmatic.” Authentic creation that affects its audience requires a certain sensibility—a sensibility that often serves to amplify daily experience. Quotidian beauty feels, at times, breath-taking, unbearable; so does pain. The desperate desire for relief from extreme experience, beautiful or painful, pushes many towards anesthetization. Bottles, needles, and pills promise numbness. Getting lost in the oblivion of a good high or a blackout starts to feel like necessity, the only viable option. This, I think, is what Siegel is getting at. John Cheever offers a description:
The writer cultivates, extends, raises and inflames his imagination. As he inflates his imagination, he inflates his capacity for anxiety, and inevitably becomes the victim of crushing phobias that can only be allayed by crushing doses of heroin or alcohol.
There is a correlative relationship between artistic genius and addiction. But it’s a negligent inaccuracy (and a logical fallacy) to characterize the dynamic as causal. The bulk of Hoffman’s most exquisite performances were rendered during 23 years of sobriety. Heroin didn’t enable his craft, heroin killed him.
The notion of an “arrangement with his demons” is similarly misleading. You can’t make a deal with addiction because addiction doesn’t play fair. The terms continuously change. Any relief found early on inevitably becomes elusive. The more you use, the more you have to use to get the job done. The sweet, innocent numbness of that first drunk or high becomes a lure, like the toy hare at a greyhound race, and addiction keeps you chasing until you drop. Any so-called “arrangement” is executed under duress and denial, and is, for all intents and purposes, illegitimate.
By the time I was 17, I was already trying to make my own “arrangement.” Just let me make it to 25, I bargained. I’ll stop when I turn 25. But I made it only to the week before my 21st birthday, just about the same age that Hoffman got sober. I never put a needle in my arm and, 9 years later, I don’t have any plans to, but most of the time you don’t see relapse coming. Addiction wants to make you a statistic and it doesn’t stop trying when you stop using. When I start to think that a drink sounds good—just a little something to take the edge off—I remind myself that the edge is where I want to be. Everything worthwhile happens at the edge.
Truman Capote—famously portrayed by Hoffman and infamous for his own addictions—said on the Dick Cavett show in 1973: “I don’t think anyone can write while they’re drinking…it’s impossible.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but what I understand Capote to mean is that alcoholics can’t write while they’re drinking. During this same interview, he talked about his novel, Answered Prayers, which he failed to finish before his death in 1984, over 10 years later. He died of liver failure and I doubt very much he felt satisfied with the “arrangement.” To this point, Cheever wrote, after winding up in Alcoholics Anonymous:
To die of drink is sometimes thought a graceful and natural death — overlooking wet-brains, convulsions, delirium tremens, hallucinations, hideous automobile accidents and botched suicides … To drink oneself to death was not in any way alarming, I thought, until I found that I was drinking myself to death.
In one of Hoffman’s last films, A Most Wanted Man, he plays the role of Günther Bachmann—a heavy-drinking, German spy. Hoffman was brilliant and at the film’s close, we see him returning to a dimly lit bar to drink it all away. Perhaps it was his experience of deep, acute pain that allowed him to play the part authentically. But it was in spite of his addiction to drugs, not because of it, that he performed the way he did. It’s not that the “poison was his elixir.” The elixir was his poison.
Last night, I heard someone say that watching a talented addict overdose is like watching a library burn to the ground. There’s nothing romantic about it.
