Pubdate: Thu, 08 Aug 2002
Source: Ledger-Enquirer (GA)
Copyright: 2002 Ledger-Enquirer
Contact:  http://www.l-e-o.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237
Author: Kaffie Sledge. News Columnist
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

CAN'T SPIN AWAY DRUG, MENTAL PROBLEMS

People who have mental or emotional issues may be misled by the Hollywood 
spin mental health has recently received. "Superman" co-star Margot Kidder, 
who has a history of excessive drinking and mental illness, now says she 
healed her body, which made her bipolar disorder and other mental health 
diagnoses disappear.

And comedian Martin Lawrence has produced a concert movie to portray his 
version of events that put him in headlines and on the evening news in the 
late 1990s. The movie, "Runteldat," is currently playing, and is said to be 
aimed at critics: "I'm still here. Now run tell that."

Lawrence admits he was on "something he bought from his dope man" when he 
was apprehended after standing at a freeway intersection with a weapon, 
shouting obscenities and mumbling incoherently. Following that incident, he 
went to a psychiatric ward for a while.

So was he also under the influence of something he bought from his dope man 
when he was arrested for assault in a nightclub, or when he collapsed from 
heat exhaustion?

Perhaps someone should run and tell Lawrence there is nothing funny about 
substance abuse. For many people, getting high, getting loaded or taking 
the edge off are the first steps of their journey into addiction.

Lawrence makes money by making people laugh. So in an attempt to sustain 
his marketability, he needs to make his fans laugh at his misfortune. But I 
fail to see the humor in the near-death experiences of a substance abuser.

Kidder, best known as Lois Lane in the "Superman" movies, comes from a 
different angle. Now referring to herself as a poster child for mental 
health, she says her mental illness is a thing of the past.

"For me, the solution was finally getting away from psychiatric drugs and 
actually healing my body so I wouldn't have the symptoms that are called 
mental illness," said Kidder, now appearing in the "Vagina Monologues" at 
the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Just as Lawrence's jokes aren't really funny, Kidder's explanations don't 
fully explain. "I've been diagnosed with everything from schizophrenia to 
manic depression to attention deficit disorder," she has said. After going 
missing for three days in April 1996, she was discovered -- delusional, 
dirty, bruised, missing bridgework and her hair hacked off -- in a woodpile 
in a Los Angeles neighborhood.

Her symptoms were serious, and after the incident, Kidder revealed she had 
dealt with mental illness most of her adult life. She also seemed to blame 
the incident on the psychiatric medication she was taking. Today, she is an 
advocate of orthomolecular therapy, a controversial field of medicine that 
claims major mental illnesses can be treated through a carefully planned 
nutritional program.

Is Kidder for real, or is this PR strategy?

The cause of schizophrenia is still unknown, so are we to believe its 
symptoms are so easily vanquished?
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager