Scoop of the Year - Pop Star Takes Drugs!

The Sun (yes, I have been trawling their website this morning) has this out and out scoop as their lead story – pop star goes into re-hab! By Christ, this is the story of the year! Never before has a pop star gone into re-hab! This is completely and utterly unprecedented! In no way does Pete Doherty, for example, spend half his time in rehab and the other half in court* owing to his crack habit.

In order to celebrate this scoop, The Sun goes into graphic detail about the problems Williams has. Literally – graphic detail. They have pictures of pills, cigarettes, Red Bull cans and espressos in case anyone is so fucking dumb that they don’t know what those items look like. But they also list exactly what is causing Robbie Williams’s problems:

“The singer finds it impossible to get to sleep until 4 or 5am due to insomnia and is on sleeping pills. He is hooked on the powerful and controversial anti-depressant Seroxat, which has been linked to suicidal tendencies in teenagers. And daily he gets through an incredible 36 super-strength double espresso coffees, 60 Silk Cut cigarettes and around 20 cans of energy drink Red Bull.”

That list sounds like an average day to me. But joking aside, 20 cans of Red Bull, 60 fags and 36 double espressos may well be the cause of the insomnia. I’m no doctor, but I am guessing that pumping your body full of caffeine is going create sleeping problems. Maybe I am missing the point here, but Williams is causing his own sleeping problems. Perhaps cutting down on the coffee and other stimulants may, in the long term, negate the need for sleeping pills. I appreciate I am being deliberately obtuse, but sometimes it is worth pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Also, the observation that Seroxat is linked to suicidal tendencies in teenagers is pointless and stupid – it is merely going to make anti-depressants more of a taboo. Of course anti-depressants are linked to suicidal tendencies in teenagers – the teenagers taking Seroxat are likely to be fucking depressed – hence the need for anti-depressants. You can link Seroxat to suicidal tendencies, but you probably need to stress that they are not the cause of those suicidal tendencies.

Anyway, that is an aside. Let’s get back to the problems of poor Robbie. The Sun identifies the cause of Williams’s addictions and other woes:

“He suffered agonies as Take That’s reunion tour became one of the biggest pop events of 2006. Their comeback single Patience went straight in at No1 and stayed there for six weeks. Their new album Beautiful World also went straight to No1 and has sold 1.5 million copies.”

Agonies? Agonies? Fucking hell, I would have thought mild disappointment would be the most Take That doing better than him would have caused. I would equate agony with cancer, or some other terrible disease. Perhaps a crippling bereavement would warrant the word “agonies”. Not his former band doing better than him in the charts. Ultimately he fucker lives in luxury, and has had a successful career that most people can only dream of. If the success of the reformed Take That is really the cause of Williams’s problems, he should get a bit of frigging perspective on his life.

I am sure that Robbie Williams is suffering, and addiction is a terrible thing. But it is also about personal responsibility. Everyone suffers from disappointments and setbacks in life, not everyone gets themselves addicted to prescription drugs and other vices. Sure, Williams has made a positive step by going into rehab to overcome his problems, but I cannot bring myself to be too sympathetic. As harsh as it sounds, he had the choice to become addicted – as difficult as it may have been to resist the slippery slope to addiction – so in spite of The Sun’s surprisingly sympathetic treatment of someone they would normally class an evil druggie, I think Williams has only himself to blame. Fundamentally Williams is responsible for his own behaviour, and the fact that he has made the wrong choices does not make me think he should become a tragic figure warranting our sympathy.

*Believe it or not, Doherty used to be a rock star before he became a celebrity drug addict. I remain a big fan of The Libertines. However, most of the music he has made since leaving/being sacked from that band has convinced me that he should focus on his real job – getting loaded, and then arrested.