Stephen Fry: Addiction, Al Pacino, Robin Williams & Philip Seymour Hoffman - BBC News

so I made a complete spectacular idiot of myself last weekend I worked old Sunday Donner on a radio for extra program I was comedy curating for the channel and alum title I have a nap the nap just grew and grew and then I woke up rather groggily and looked at the phone and I saw that I had missed to you without pacino and that's thought that's ridiculous you didn't fall asleep knowing that you're gonna have tea with Al Pacino and then it's gonna blow him out you know what did you do there was a huge space of emails from my PA and from his people saying they were very concerned you okay mr. Frye is everything all right al is there's no problem and I just grabbed all the back saying I there no terrible I had a year's sleep problems [Laughter] about Patino sitting alone at a table in the cafe in London just waiting waiting for Stevie prizes John Kahler menacing I like the unshaven design unfortunates pointing and yes the man who can command many to kill you said he said something really interesting there which was you know I made a total fool of myself your book more for me and and reading the book you're really tough on yourself on you well I think it's an advantage of age we roll through the cycles of our life and we look back at certain episodes certain behaviors that and lifestyles that we sense him to just get dipped into what dip ourselves into and you want to shout at that person in the past I don't know if you ever have dreams where you sit your exams again or you you get a second chance to do something that you feel you've screwed up with and I felt that really about this period in the nineties when everything was at my feet we should not and for some reasons I'm part of me just wanted to but I hid all the way in this kind of blizzard of party partying and you know it's a subject that's very difficult talk about because a lot of people just immediately turn off against another slurp moaning and wringing their hands about their addiction and we've had enough of this just they should have manned up and just not done it and I agree on the other hand addictive substances are addictive and they fell a gap in the lives of certain people but who are most vulnerable to them and there's of course particularly the there's the mental disorder if you're video of your moods are not easy to control and you don't really understand what's wrong with you then the easiest thing is to say well if I'm really just too high in hyper alcohol just makes me brings me down and if I'm if I'm too low you can perks me up I mean it's a silly equation and it's they chase each other and get each other worse and worse and worse alcohol of course is a depressant so dude so it drives you to have more coke coke actually makes you want to drink more alcohol so you become more and more of a mess I was fortunate in as much as my absolute passion for everything I do over ray ever rode any you know any professional engagement that anything I was late for anything or go on stage you know in a wired or in a state or film you know in that way it was a party thing I know it's a terrible cliche but it was a part of the I hate parties I don't think I've ever met anybody in my life or been to a place I hate more than I hate parties unless that people sitting on the tables glass of wine chatting but parties and music and and yelling and music and yelling more music I just can't pass them but this strange little powder from South America for some reason stimulates you enough to be in a mood to Indian parties there's a self-medication almost education in the trade and I know a lot of people very unsympathetic about that and say oh come on core she could call it what it is it's like they're not on used to do years ago a set on that people who appear on television saying that they experimented with drugs were there in the 20th year I've been experimenting with lager for 30 years it you know it's not about letting oneself off the hook it's really just about the fact that I've written three autobiographies and I've altered them all to be completely honest and this is a very this is a very honest road bump in my life that if I left out people who knew me would say them I was a deliberate evasion some might even say some malicious people might say are you sanitized his autobiography leaving out the the massive human problems annoys you how does it feel now on the other side of writing the book to have been so honest did you get from writing it what you hoped to get I think so I mean I know that there are people all over this country who are addicted in various degrees to different substances and they are divided into two classes that are very lucky people like me who because we have money in position or the only want to call it can kind of hide it or at least get away with it and none of those who had driven from their homes and live in the streets or cluster together in crack dens or crystal meth Factory and for them life is much harder that drug is cheaper more and more infectious the addictive and it's not as you know it's not as pleasant to be utterly dependent on something like that or heroin not that it's pleasant to be dependent on cocaine so though there is a lot of a sort of anger amongst some social workers who say that the police are not interested in the resting white middle-class people who take cocaine in in media bars at night because they didn't threaten the streets or the good order of the of the city whereas marauding gangs of crystal meth addicts who need more money Erin Ericson they do threaten the Peace of the city so they there's an unfair charge that you know the the comfortably off don't get don't get any police committing a crime which is ingesting the class a drug and did you ever worry about exposure did you ever think or was that part of it I heard of it it's very good question I don't know I mean it's just sort of slow pernicious suicide in a way you know that you can't carry on doing it in your brain you say I can't I can't just every time I you know I'm a mud-free and I've got an evening I'll just go off into them into a gentlemen's lavatory and chop up lines of this ridiculous balance no it's not mean it's doing something to my brain I've seen people have been on it for longer than me who are a salad a mess I think we can all know and think of people who've died of it's famous singers and performers it has a strain on the heart because it's a raises the metabolism and it increases the amount of alcohol moans and of course it took dives one darling just this is actually if you can't afford it cause it's quite expensive though it's held its price which i think is one of the things that's quite surprising about it used in the 1980s to be about sixty pounds for a gram of cocaine and it's now about 40 pounds of grand okay but you didn't want it's cut with means you get all the way from South America comes this cocoa just been acid-based reduced into crystals or it's a paste and hidden in avars orgoth gosh knows what smuggled in somehow through Spain and then then it's given to the big people who might never meet you know you you meet the little dealers who are ordinary people and students who've just life's got a bit wrong and there's the newspaper school and they're the ones we should punish the pushers they never push it on you they're being pushed all the time but you get me a couple of grams to come got me come on I need some you know actually it's very much a buyers market not a seller's market and and and I mean a seller's market apparently and so they take it and they they need to make a profit out of it and they cut it with baby laxative and all kinds of distressing objects to make it seems like we'll okay the book is do me very much with it with your experience with the drink and drugs it in the ninth how you doing how you doing now well I'm in more than normal mid fifties citizen now I'm happy to say I did what hasn't gone away is well I think is probably the underlying cause which is often the case with alcoholics or people that are dependent which is which is why you chose to numb yourself away from the real world in the first place and that is the illness that I have which was recently realizing route rediagnosis by my psychiatrist as by Padawan and I had thought rather cheerful it was cyclothymia or by Perla 2 which is less serious um and so he changed that there's a regime of medication for me and I was really really not for six by the death of Robin Williams he thought more talented but at a similar track of cocaine and alcohol use and then he stopped and then very recently very recently as we know you could take it them all man who gave such extraordinary pleasure and even the film's people criticized him for this like the sentimental ones were well because that's how he Wallace he was such a soft sweet kind man and I've seen him in rooms being more funny than I think the collective all collective comedians put together in history have been he just is nothing it was funny he was funny but whatever funny nose is he was it and he would come offstage everywhere and I remember dick cavett change him in you know changing room he said Robin you you just made 3,000 people happier than they've ever been in their lives Norman said for mr. crazy I can't make myself happy just what's happened to him scare you about yourself it does give me because it's you know all those years of him fighting he's older than me and the other one was Philip Seymour Hoffman them and I never took heroin but I was in brought on an old robbery show and when when he was and we came down town I was in the West Village there were all these people standing outside the apartments with holding candles and I went for some what's going on in Sedona and you have a Philip Seymour Hoffman died I said to how because I met him several times it afterwards and things and you know very solid grounded person always drunk always drunk who was drank you know a soft drink and and everyone said knew he was not an alcoholic or at least rather he was an alcoholic and therefore didn't ever drink and it was pretty known secret that 20 years before something he had been a heroin addict and he had gone into his house and he'd stacked up boxes virtually of heroin he turned the corner and Aaron Sorkin who wrote West Wing read this Marvis ask of the New York Times who himself he'd had a cocaine problem all the way through West Wing and he and Philip Seymour Hoffman were outside that son stage and they said to each other you know a sex addict talking about their history and Aaron Sorkin said I don't believe I was a real addict because I you know I just sniffed up through my nose but you were finding veins in the veins Harden and he found a new one and you pump it up in a new one and then one here and then here and here then in your private parts and then then in your tongue your eyeball you know that's that's when that's how desperate I really get they've had to find a new source in the veins of I think I'm too squeamish to be a propriety and Philip Seymour Hoffman said stay squeamish and three weeks later he was dead destroyed 23 years he had been completely clean so you it's it's chronic in the in the literal sense of the word it lives with you forever it just doesn't go away like asthma or diabetes or something you have to learn to manage it and I have a marvelous doctor who helps me I see him as often as I can and I'm very lucky in that regard he's very firm with me yeah Steve thank you so much for your honesty this morning

Channel: BBC News

Views: 1,369,606

Keywords: stephen fry, Stephen Fry (Celebrity), stephen, fry, bbc, news, breakfast, bbc news, bbc breakfast, stephen fry interview, stephen fry bbc, addiction, Cocaine (Abused Substance), Heroin (Drug), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Celebrity), Robin Williams (Celebrity), more fool me, Bipolar Disorder (Disease Or Medical Condition), Al Pacino (Celebrity), stephen fry addiction, drugs, marijuana, british

Id: um5hmc-XgWI

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 25 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/forestfluff]

I don't know if a lot of people know but Robin did suffer from severe depression but he also suffered from Parkinson's and "It was revealed following his death that Williams had been suffering from severe depression, and had been sleeping in a different room from his wife due to restlessness and anxiety caused by his Parkinson's".

Also,

The final autopsy report, released in November 2014, affirmed that Williams had committed suicide as initially described; neither alcohol nor illegal drugs were involved, while any prescription drugs present in Williams' body were at "therapeutic" levels. The report also noted that Williams had been suffering "a recent increase in paranoia". An examination of his brain tissue revealed the presence of "diffuse Lewy body dementia". Williams' doctors reportedly believe that Lewy body dementia "was the critical factor" that led to his suicide.

[u/memyselfandeye]

Fry could tell you that he killed babies and you'd think it was most warm, sensible thing a human could do.

[u/Lazy_Wasp_Legs]

'Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. Great clown, Pagliacci, is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.” Man bursts into tears. Says, “But doctor, I am Pagliacci.”'

-Rorschach from "The Watchmen"

[u/Turk_Mc_Ducken]

stephen fry sounds very different. his speaking voice is different

[u/fdtc_skolar]

Three years ago I lost my spouse after an almost 40 year relationship. I turned to my bicycles because I found them physically and mentally therapeutic.

per this article ( http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/12/sport/cycling-robin-williams-armstrong-sky/index.html ), "He might have been best known for his acting career, but Robin Williams, who has died aged 63, was a cycling fanatic who counted among his friends Lance Armstrong and five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx. When he was once asked how many bikes he owned, Williams quipped "too many to count" and he was an avid follower of the professional cycling scene."

His death struck me because, like me, he was trying to ride out of his depression. I just wished it had worked as well for him as it has for me.

[u/dreinn]

Today is Stephen Fry's birthday!

[u/The1WhoRingsTheBell]

Stephen looks like a giant next to the presenters. He's about 6'4 but they look absolutely tiny!

[u/nhguy03276]

I remember watching his appearance on "Inside the Actors Studio", and while he was all smiles and crazy, making the audience laugh, I could help but think that his eyes held a deep sadness.

[u/Diredoe]

The other day I was listening to Pandora's "Comedy Icons" station, and Robin Williams came on. He was talking about his GPS and how it gave terrible directions, and at one point he said (paraphrased):

"I was driving over the Golden Gate bridge and it said, 'turn right, now.' Thanks, but I'm not that depressed!"

One of those harsher in hindsight moments.