Sometimes it takes an addict to create revolutionary change. So long, with regrets, Dennis Hopper and baseball great Willie Davis
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Actor Dennis Hopper, dead from complications of advanced prostate cancer at age 74. According to Rolling Stone Magazine, Hopper was one of “Hollywood’s most notorious drug addicts for 20 years.” For a period in the 1970s he was ostracized by Hollywood for being a “difficult” actor. No wonder: for the last five years before he stopped drinking and drugging in the mid-‘80s, his addiction had grown to “doing half a gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, 28 beers and 3 grams of cocaine a day—and that wasn’t getting high, that was just to keep going.” He was married five times, including to Michelle Phillips for two weeks and, more recently, Victoria Duffy, whom he called “insane, inhuman and volatile.” He was reportedly good friends with James Dean during his brief life and appeared with him in the mid-‘50s films “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant,” after which he hung out with Elvis Presley and actor Nick Adams for a period of time. He got his big break directing and starring in the 1969 classic “Easy Rider,” which was plagued with creative differences and personal acrimony between him and Peter Fonda. Three decades later, he accused actor Rip Torn of pulling a knife on him during pre-production, which resulted in a defamation lawsuit by Torn, who claimed Hopper had pulled it on him. After losing, Hopper appealed and lost again, paying Torn a total of $950,000 in punitive damages. Among my favorite roles, Hopper played the villain in the Keanu Reeves-Sandra Bullock movie “Speed” and the villain Victor Drazen in the first season of “24.” Hopper apparently stayed sober until recently, when he began using marijuana to ease nausea and pain from the cancer. When someone tells me about an addict in his life, “Oh, (s)he’ll never get sober,” I’ll think of you, Dennis and tell them about the miracle of your recovery.
And so long to the “brilliant but sometimes erratic” Los Angeles Dodgers baseball great Willie Davis, dead at age 69 from apparently natural causes. Described as having “million-dollar legs and a 10-cent head” in 1996 by Buzzie Bavasi, the Dodgers’ general manager during their early years in Los Angeles, Davis would have been more aptly described as alternating between greatness (he stole 20 bases or more over 11 consecutive seasons) and apparent stupidity due to his having the disease of alcoholism. Bavasi made his comments after Davis was arrested in 1996, samurai sword and set of throwing knives in hand, at his parents’ home for allegedly threatening to kill them and burn their house down unless they gave him $5,000.
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts—which would explain the misbehaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, making these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism, consequential bad behaviors and, ultimately, tragedy, is simple: stop protecting the addict from the logical consequences of misbehaviors and, where possible, proactively intervene.