Demi Lovato and Why We Shouldn’t Care About Her Problems

Let me be clear. It’s terrible that anyone has to go through an overdose or drug addiction in general so this article isn’t intended to downplay the issue but instead illustrate why we shouldn’t focus on a particular area of it; in this case, celebrities like Demi Lovato.

Source: NY Post

It’s not so much their art, it’s their story.

Take Vincent Van Gogh. He was no doubt a great surrealist and one of the most recognizable artists of the past 300 years, but if you take an hour to explain to the average person the quality of his work and his surrealist qualities, your friend would most likely fall asleep.

However, tell a story about the man’s mental illness, the time he cut his ear off and gave it to a prostitute, and the time he finally shot himself in a deserted field, you not only have an interesting story, but a book, movie, Netflix series, etc.

Point is that, unfortunately, Van Gogh is more famous for his suffering than he was for his art. No matter how great of an artist he truly was.

To some extent, the same can be said about many artists in recent years including Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, and Heath Ledger.

Poor little me

People won’t like to admit it but we’re a species that likes to complain. My little cousins do it, my parents do it, even I do it.

Source: mom.me

The best part of complaining is telling our story of how the world is unfair we're innocent victims. We become little crusaders for our own first-world problems.

Sometimes our complaints are valid so we actually do something to fix the situation. Other times someone tells us to shut the fuck up and get over it.

The worst thing, however, is when someone validates our feelings and says it really is the whole world that's wrong.

So from then on, people who are convinced the world is unfair (or their alcoholic father, ex-girlfriend, teacher, best friend, parole officer, etc.) wander the earth. Never doing much to fix their problems but doing a lot to make others listen. They might also ask you for some change while they’re at it.

The point is that some people live off their problems. They’re more of a source of attention and validation than any real accomplishment. Worst part is that sad stories definitely get more attention than successful ones. So it’s only natural that if there's a big demand for misery, people will surely supply it. Nothing satisfies that demand quite like celebrity sob stories.

An everyday junkie

I live in Hell's Kitchen Manhattan and, although the neighborhood is very much gentrified by now (in part to douchebag bankers like me moving in), there are signs of its seedy past of drug dealers, stripclubs, and vagrants every other corner.

Bryant Park New York in the 1970s

It seems like every morning on my way to work I’ll see an overdose, a fight, an arrest, or bizarre behavior by people who are obviously on drugs. Thing is that I’m not the only person around the country that sees this on a daily basis but why does it take a celebrity to check into a four-star rehab resort for an entire population to pay attention to what’s always been around.

Obviously, by definition celebrities are magnets for attention. So if Demi Lovato has a scary but not surprising overdose, the world acts as if the pope has been shot.

The problem is that we treat celebrities like if their problems are special, that their story is especially hard, and how they’re inspiring. Apparently, you can be a junkie, a victim, and a hero at the same time.

"She’s our warrior and this is a fight she will win. We are with you @ddlovato, you’ve got this❤️ #PrayForDemi" - @WorldDemiLovato

Before I continue, if you’re a celebrity addict - you’re no hero. You’re a junkie. End of story.

This becomes a larger problem when we shower celebrities like Demi Lovato with a disproportionate amount of attention and love notes for doing absolutely nothing other than being irresponsible with a substance they were too irresponsible to have in the first place.

It’s dangerous because we subconsciously communicate to others, depressed teenagers and adults alike, that if they make similar choices they too will also get the love and attention they’ve been craving.

Intervention and family

My family and I are no strangers to the ravages of alcoholism, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine. I’m happy to say that these problems are nothing but memories now.

It took a lot of love and support to make recovery easier but, make no mistake, my family did not tolerate the problem.

Their love and support was ultimately conditional and finite. In other words, if we didn’t get better, we can consider our family gone.

The fear of losing our family was motivating. If I turned to drugs as a way to cry for help, feel loved, or simply get attention, I would not be finding it among them.

If my family treated our addicts the same way Demi Lovato’s fans treat her, rest assured some of us wouldn’t be alive.

Support and love your artists, but have standards. If most of their media time is spent on their little crusade of how hard celebrity life can be, move on and don’t feel sorry for them. There are plenty of things more pressing than another young and wealthy celebrity taking too many drugs. Just go to the US-Mexico border and see for yourself.

Real Deal Celebrity Rehab Center