Winning! Or Not So Much?

I am new to Skinny Scoop, and if you haven’t checked them out yet, be sure to do so. It’s a lot of info sharing and getting feedback. The main method is through surveys, which I love! There are questions to answer or you can make your own. Here’s the question I created:

http://www.theskinnyscoop.com/

I have one word to describe my feeling on this whole Charlie Sheen fiasco: sad.

It’s sad to watch him implode.

It’s sad that people are buying tickets to his breakdown.

It’s sad that people around him are taking advantage of someone who is not well in order to make a few bucks.

I think from far away, maybe it’s not what it seems. Maybe it seems like Charlie is all winning all the time. He’s having fun with his goddesses. According to him, his boss fired him for no reason. And he’s the best so clearly there is nothing wrong with him.

It’s someone else’s fault.

But if you’ve ever seen someone suffer from addiction and/or mental illness, it’s scary. It’s horrifying to watch someone you love spiral out of control. It’s living with the fear of when that other shoe inevitably drops. And mixed in there, is a giant dose of helplessness.

Dealing with someone who is unstable is an exercise in empathy and self-preservation. Trying to find balance within that dichotomy is incredibly difficult. You want to help, but can’t put yourself in harm’s way yet you feel guilty for wanting to save yourself.

It’s a vicious cycle.

And this is unfortunate because I believe that if people were more honest in talking about mental health and addiction, then maybe the stigma attached to these conditions would be lifted. People could talk about it and figure out treatment options without feeling shamed or embarrassed.

I mean, I get it – when people act outrageous and aggressive, it’s easy to write it off as being a jerk.

But people don’t get all uppity when a diabetic can’t process their sugar.

No one ever tell the diabetic to *try* harder to process that sugar. No one ever takes a diabetic to Hershey Park and tells him to eat as much chocolate as possible and then becomes mad when he gets cranky from low blood sugar and then passes out, possibly into a life-threatening coma.

So I think it’s just sad how people line up and take a cheap shot at those who are mentally ill.

What are your thoughts on this whole Charlie Sheen debacle? What’s your attitude toward mental illness and how it’s perceived?