Elvis impersonator: a journalist gets cause and effect backwards.
And a bonus myth-of-the-month:
“Being Elvis comes with risks…. As a teenager, Sean began drinking and smoking pot.”
So wrote Bo Emerson, in “Requiem for a blues player” in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in explaining why Sean Costello, a “child genius who grew into a mature artist” and whose “legacy lives on,” overdosed in 2008. No, Mr. Emerson, having the ability and notoriety of an Elvis Presley doesn’t carry risks; having alcoholic genes does. On tour, Costello could be a stay-up-all-night party animal. He’d been in rehab at least once. He was described as manic, staying up for three or four days. But mania rarely occurs without benefit of external injections of chemicals; he always did drugs. The toxicology report found his brain “swimming” in psychoactive chemicals, including cocaine and heroin.
While Emerson gets it partly right, acknowledging Costello began drinking at an early age, he fails to ascribe cause and effect. If psychotropic drug addiction isn’t the problem, addicts can’t get sober because there is nothing to get sober from and there’s no reason to stop using. Identify addiction as the cause of all the other problems and we’ll be right about 80-90% of the time. Once we know someone has the disease of addiction, they can be coerced into stopping the use and, only then, will they have a chance.