Okay, look.
It’s fun to make fun of someone who’s making such a public display of bottoming out as Charlie Sheen is right now. I get it. I think partly our drive to point and laugh at the tragedy of a person falling apart is that it’s kind of fascinating to watch someone completely deteriorate … if you don’t know that person. Not so much when you do. And I think partly, we watch, and we snicker, and we pass around links to other people making fun of the implosion, because, well … because we can look at a Charlie Sheen falling to pieces in front of the world and thank God (or whatever deity we pray to) that it’s not us.
But people, really. A worldwide audience with 1,000,000 + people on Twitter egging on someone who’s clearly off his fucking rocker right now? Is like standing on a bridge egging on the suicidal jumper to take a leap. What’s happening in media around the Charlie Sheen debacle is just tragic, and really pushing the boundaries of any kind of ethics.
I’ve dealt with addiction in my life. I’ve watched a loved one sink into the depths of addiction faster than I ever thought possible, seen a person I thought I knew well turn into someone completely different. I’ve had my heart ripped out witnessing it. I’ve trembled in fear because of it. It’s like being Danny, the little kid in The Shining, desperately loving the kind, gentle father who turns into a monster with a roque mallet because of his narcissism and addiction, banging holes in the walls that will soon be your skull if he finds you, while you cower in fear.
A person falling off the deep end in this way is not, I assure you, funny to his kids. Or his parents. Or to anyone who knows him personally and cares about his demise in a way that the world, obviously, just does not.
And while there is a way back out of it — for some people (Robert Downey Jr, may you stay forever sober, please) — for many there is not. For Charlie Sheen, there may not be a way back. So tell me, please. What the hell is funny about that?
