The New York Times reports on Marshall Mathers's (Eminem, Slim Shady) drug abuse problem, overdose, relapse, and recovery. Mather overdosed on methodone, one of the drugs that was found in the toxicology during the autopsy of my oldest son. Methadone was possibly the drug that made lethal the mix of substances he had taken. Were it not for this connection, I probably would not be commenting on this story.
Mather has:
started the full 12-step program of a recovering addict, complete with meetings, a sponsor and a therapist.
Mather is continuing his career:
Eminem resumes — or relapses into — his main alter ego, Slim Shady: the sneering, clownish, paranoid, homophobic, celebrity-stalking compulsive rapist and serial killer who plays his exploits for queasy laughs and mass popularity.
During the early part of his career:the article states:
Eminem quickly became an offensive scourge to those who took Shady’s fantasies literally, or worried that others might.
Both in my training as a registered nurse and my support of my son’s efforts at recovery, I learned much about the 12-step program. I have often wondered how people like Mather reconcile how they earn their living with their 12-Step program, especially these:
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
This may be how Mather does it:
Now, a decade into his major-label career, “I’m done explaining it,” he said. “Here’s my music. Here’s what it is. Get what you get from it. I didn’t get in this game to be a role model.”“At the end of the day, it’s just words,” he added. “That’s all it is to me.”
That is literally true but very disturbing to those like me who have personally and professionally experienced the devastation of substance abuse.
Mather is not alone in this behavior. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck both acknowledge that they are in recovery from substance abuse while they both continue to earn their living with mean-spirited, hateful lies that, like Mather’s lyrics, raise fear that people with disordered minds will take literally enough to act out violently.
Ceasing substance abuse is the first half of recovery. Ceasing abusive behaviors learned while abusing substances is the second half.
I raise these questions reluctantly as recovery is a very personal matter. However, Mather and others have made their recovery very public, even using it to promote their careers. That opens them to questions like mine.
I hope they are addressing these questions in their 12-Step program, with their sponsor and therapist.
