the wolfie voice. i watched an interview with Oprah and Lindsay Lohan. Oprah said something like “i personally have experience with addiction; i have an addiction to food.” She went on to say, “Lindsay, i know alcoholism is a disease, but you’ve been to rehab 6 times, what is the dis-ease in you that makes you drink?”
i haven’t paraphrased this correctly, Oprah phrased it even worse than this, but that’s the gist of it.
Let me tell you, i got all agitated watching the show. I had an answer ready for Oprah that Lindsay left unspoken. I watched Oprah be moderately condescending, and then trying to be sympathetic. But she didn’t get it.
I wanted to be Lindsay sitting in that chair, and I wanted to say this:
Whether alcoholism is a disease or not, i couldn’t say. Really, that would be like asking if depression or anxiety are diseases.
I know I drank because it made me feel better. And then it didn’t.
I never wanted to quit drinking because i thought it was helping me with my depression and my anxiety. I never realized that it was actually making me feel worse. I thought booze was my friend. But booze lied to me.
And Oprah, would you ask the same question to someone addicted to cocaine? wouldn’t you recognize that while the person using the drug probably has something they’re trying to self-medicate, sure, but that the drug itself takes over pretty quickly and demands more. the drug makes you crave more drugs.
You see Oprah, I don’t have a ‘dis-ease’ that makes me drink and drive. Booze itself does that. I don’t have a dis-ease that makes me drink in public and act idiotic and get in trouble and look like a ruined child star while people are watching and taking pictures of me to sell to the press. Booze does that.
And if i remove the booze, most of my problems go away.
Sure, I might still be attention seeking, i’m in show biz. I might have 10% narcissistic in me, but i’m a beautiful model and I like people to look at me. That’s normal. You might think i’m a bit OCD about how i like my clothes folded, but a lot of very successful people are more than a little OCD about their lives. it’s how we (attempt) to manage our very public lives. we find comfort in how our clothes are folded.
But you know what? if i remove the booze, most of my big, in the press, legal, emotional, financial, and relationship problems will go away.
Sure, i might still be depressed, or anxious to some extent. But nothing like when i was drinking.
And yes, i have work to do and things to fix, but frankly removing the booze itself will dramatically improve my life. Hands down. Without the booze i’m in a much better place to be able to deal with the rest of my life.
It’s a fair question, Oprah, to ask why the first 5 trips to rehab didn’t work and why this last time i think it has. See, Oprah, you’re not in my head. And i’d have to question if you really have an ‘addiction’ as you say. Because if you did, you’d sympathize that the wolfie voice tells us we’re not worthy, that we’re a fuck up, that we’ve failed and will continue to fail. You’d know that was the booze talking, and not really us. But you’d also know that it takes a while to learn to differentiate between wolfie and our true selves.
If you really knew what i was talking about, Oprah, you would have sympathized with an anecdote like “i know what you mean Lindsay, i decide to give up sugar for one day and i’m doing well and then at 8:30 pm i drink a glass of tonic that’s put in front of me, and suddenly realize that i’ve blown my goal because there’s sugar in tonic. So then i eat cookies, because, you know, wolfie says ‘you’ve blown it now, might as well begin again tomorrow, you can’t even do one day, cookies cookies cookies’.”
If you’d said that, Oprah, i would have nodded and agreed and would have felt relieved that you really understood.
But you didn’t.