Cracking wise on Rob Ford: a different view
In February 2007, after Britney Spears spent the weekend shaving her head and getting photographed in the act by paparazzi, late night host Craig Ferguson stepped in front of the camera and delivered one of the most compelling and unique monologues I’ve ever seen.
He spoke into the awkward silence of a confused studio audience and, before telling his own story of addiction, he wondered if a few cheap laughs were really worth taking a cheap shot at a clearly vulnerable person.
“You can embarrass someone to death. It’s embarrassing to admit you’re an alcoholic,” he said.
When I found the monologue on YouTube, I was a particularly rapt viewer as I’d been in the throes of a serious drinking problem for a year and a half. My problematic relationship with booze had been going on for about 10 years but, in the summer of 2008, it was turning into something a little more sinister.
My hands shook violently in the mornings and I rarely made it to 5 p.m. without having a drink of some sort. I never seriously considered suicide but the thought casually crossed my mind every morning as the hangover squeezed my brain and I imagined another day that was guaranteed to end in failure. It’s hard to explain — it seemed less like Hamlet’s pressing question and more like the inevitable outcome of a life lacking any hope or purpose.
On Thursday, when Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s chief of staff was fired, reportedly for demanding that Ford check himself into rehab, I felt downright miserable. I have no idea if Ford is suffering from an addiction but I feel comfortable making an educated guess.
As Ferguson said, it’s utterly humiliating to be an addict. You have the hellish knowledge that the very thing your body demands is slowly killing you and destroying everything you love about life in the process. You wake up every day either with the faint hope that maybe you won’t give in or the grim acceptance that it’ll be just like every other day. Both are about equally depressing.
When I quit drinking it was with a game plan that was months in the works and the experience of a few failures behind me. Luckiest of all, I had found myself in a relationship with a woman who was far too good for me and I knew that losing her was not an option. As a drunk, I didn’t stand a chance but as a sober person I figured I might have a shot. I was also lucky enough to have caring, supportive friends.
Even with this massive support team, giving up drinking was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
When I think of the poor souls who deal with addiction in broken homes or on the streets, my heart bleeds. They have no support and no friends to quit with them for solidarity (as one of mine did and he stuck to it with an intensity that still makes me choke up when I think about it).
When I think of the humiliation of simply admitting this problem to those around me, I can’t fathom millions of people knowing about it, never mind the malicious glee the Lindsay Lohans and the Rob Fords must reckon with. That probably would’ve been a hill too steep for me to climb.
I’d rather not be writing this and, in a perfect world, I’d just carry on with my life and pretend that I’ve always been a moderately functioning human being who’s never slept in the wet grass of a public park or spent a night in the drunk tank. But as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, there are no second acts. What you’ve done is who you are.
“I’m not absolving this woman of her behaviour. You have to be responsible for your actions,” Ferguson said in his monologue.
Of course, this is true and if Ford is refusing help then there’s not a whole lot we can do anyway. We can take a lesson though, from my friends and the beautiful, supportive woman I hope to spend my life with: if someone tells you they need help, be there for them. If they fail, help them up again.
Whatever you think of Ford, remember that he has a family who must be going through hell and, if nothing else, they deserve a little bit of empathy and a little less glee. I think we owe other human beings at least that much.