Recently Jamie Lee Curtis wrote a piece in The Huffington Post regarding the passing of Whitney Houston. Titled “Blame it on the Fame Game?” Curtis makes the point that, though celebrities get the most notoriety for struggling with substance abuse, addiction is a common problem in America that is no respecter of persons.
It knows no color, gender, age or influence. It doesn’t care about your faith, your devotion to a religion, what you’re wearing or what you eat. It doesn’t discern talent from the lack of it. It doesn’t care about fame and wealth and attention. IT want the attention and it will go to any length to get it. It kills indiscriminately and with a vengeance. It kills directly or indirectly. It doesn’t care. It just wants you dead.
Curtis goes on to write a passionate plea to readers not to focus only on the famous who are living self-destructive lifestyles of addiction but to find the links to addiction all around us, to reach out to loved ones struggling with addictions of all varieties (pne wonders if she has done so with her former co-star, Lindsay Lohan). She links to The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which tells us that 1 in 4 Americans will have an alcohol or drug problem at some point in their lives, a startling statistic. She shared how she herself had to overcome an addiction that would have otherwise killed her, as it did her brother at the age of 21.
Curtis’s personal, compassionate piece reminds her readers not to overlook the non-famous in their lives dealing with addiction and substance abuse. Had it ended there, the piece would have been sufficient.
But once you get to the end of the brief article, Curtis says:
I hope to hear the drumbeat get louder and louder, a call to arms to face addiction and alcoholism head on, to make the administration take on this epidemic and to utilize the media spotlight on this one addict’s death to create real change. (emphasis added)
Even though this piece appeared in HuffPo, that seems a bizarre conclusion to reach. It’s a shame, because otherwise Curtis’s piece is moving and intimate. But her ultimate solution to the “epidemic” of addiction is… the administration.
Obviously this is a veiled reference to Obamacare, which as we all know will make the lame walk, the blind see, and, apparently, the drunk sober. It makes one wonder if people of the left just can’t help it – the automatic leap to trust that the government will solve any problem. But how exactly has “this administration” solved problems?
- Climbing gas prices? Reinforce our dangerous and fiscally irresponsible reliance on overseas oil.
- Insecure borders? Arm the invaders.
- Poverty? Tax employers higher and increase opportunities for welfare.
- Double-digit unemployment? Just don’t count all the unemployed people.
- Crippling national debt? I think you can answer this one yourself.
Overcoming substance abuse and addiction isn’t a simple matter of picking up a check from the government or getting a monthly visit from an overloaded state social worker. Treatment for substance abuse and addictive lifestyles can take as long as months or years to bring an individual to the point where they can manage their addiction, and then the need for maintenance and accountability is often life-long. Alcoholics Anonymous has a twelve-step program, not a one-step program. There is no “magic bullet” for addictive behavior, least of all our already overburdened and fiscally irresponsible government.
Curtis herself admits there are “millions” of people battling addictions of various varieties. Does she want the government to take on the welfare of “millions” of addicts? I’m sure Curtis wrote from a place of empathy and compassion, but to suggest that the administration – any administration, but particularly this one – should be relied upon to solve the problem of addiction in America is laughable … unless you’re a liberal.
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