How does substance abuse affect celebrities?

Substance Abuse Prevalence

Although there have been no scientific studies of how often addictions
occur among celebrities, popular news sources frequently report celebrity arrests for drunk driving, drug possession, public intoxication, and other criminal offenses related to substance abuse. Many celebrities and public figures, including Betty Ford, Elizabeth Taylor, Melanie Griffith, Drew Barrymore, Keith Urban, Eminem, and Ben Affleck, to name just a few, have openly shared their personal stories of struggle with addictions in interviews and autobiographies.

Substance abuse also has been linked to the deaths of many celebrities. Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Elvis Presley, Dorothy Dandridge, Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, Anna Nicole Smith, Janice Joplin, and Heath Ledger are a few examples of celebrities whose deaths involved drug or alcohol overdoses or otherwise harmful combinations of legal and illegal substances.

Other celebrities, such as Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jr., and Charlie Sheen, have been in the public eye because of their addictions and substance-abuse-related behaviors. One television reality show, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew (which aired from 2008 to 2012), documented the lives of celebrities seeking inpatient hospital treatment for a variety of addictions. The show ended after its sixth season following the death of a fifth former cast member.

Possible Causes

By the nature of their work, celebrities are subject to public attention and scrutiny. Often, this attention and scrutiny extends beyond celebrities’ work into their personal lives. In 1972 psychologists Thomas Duval and Robert Wicklund proposed self-awareness theory, a framework that may explain why some celebrities abuse substances to cope with excessive attention.

According to self-awareness theory, when persons engage in activities that draw attention to themselves, they often evaluate themselves negatively because their actual lives do not live up to some high internal standard. When this happens, these persons are likely to experience a drop in self-esteem. Researchers who tested self-awareness theory found that people who are more self-focused, as many celebrities can be, are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Persons with higher degrees of self-focus also are more likely to have long-lasting negative moods. People may cope with this discomfort by trying to behave in ways that match their internal standards, or they may look for ways to avoid or escape a focus on the self. Some of these escapes include substance use, gambling, sex, shopping, and other addictive behaviors.

Psychologists Jay Hull and Richard Young documented this phenomenon in a 1983 study in which they asked one hundred twenty men age twenty-one years and older to complete a fake IQ test and a real measure of self-consciousness. The researchers then gave the men fake feedback about their IQ test results, telling them that they had scored poorly on the test.

Afterward, the men were asked to participate in a wine-tasting experiment in which they could moderate the amount of wine they consumed. The researchers found that men who were highly self-conscious and received negative feedback on the fake IQ test drank larger quantities of wine than did men who were less self-conscious. These findings support the theory that highly self-conscious people’s alcohol consumption increases in response to a reduction in their self-esteem. It follows that celebrities, whose life experiences force them to be highly self-conscious, also may engage in heavy substance use after receiving negative feedback, such as poor reviews or seeing oneself featured in a tabloid.

Additionally, researchers Lynne Cooper, Michael Frone, and Marcia Russell conducted an online survey and found that both adolescents and adults reported using alcohol both to cope with negative emotions and to increase positive emotions. Additionally, psychological research studies have found that people report increased or inflated self-esteem after consuming alcohol. This research suggests that celebrities may abuse substances as a means to artificially increase their self-perception.

Celebrities also may be likely to abuse substances because of norms of substance use and abuse in celebrity culture. Anthropological research indicates that throughout the world, persons more often than not tend to conform to the accepted social practices and behaviors of their cultures; celebrities are no exception. Young or emerging celebrities may be socialized into a culture in which substance abuse is common, and these celebrities may then later take part in that cultural norm and encourage other celebrities to do the same.

Negative Social Effects

Several research studies have documented that people imitate behaviors they observe in others. In a famous study of observational learning, psychologist Albert Bandura and his colleagues Dorothea Ross and Sheila Ross showed children a film of an adult punching, kicking, beating, and insulting a doll. Children who had observed this aggressive behavior were significantly more likely to engage in aggressive play with the doll, imitating the behaviors of the adult and engaging in new aggressive behaviors.

Many other psychological studies have replicated these results, showing that people learn behaviors, both desirable and undesirable, through watching others. Observing celebrities engage in substance abuse increases the likelihood that members of the general public will imitate this behavior.

Other research in psychology suggests that celebrities are particularly influential role models because they have many of the factors that increase the likelihood of others selecting them as models for observational learning. These factors include attention, high social status, attractiveness, and in some cases, similarity in age, gender, or other characteristics. Additionally, celebrities who abuse substances often face less serious legal and financial consequences for their behavior than do noncelebrities. Therefore, those who are observing celebrity behaviors may be more likely to abuse substances themselves, as they do not see their role models experiencing significant negative consequences for their behavior.

Bibliography

Bandura, Albert, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila A. Ross. “Transmission of Aggression through Imitation of Aggressive Models.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 63.3 (1961): 575–82. Print.

Cooper, M. Lynne, et al. “Drinking to Regulate Positive and Negative Emotions: A Motivational Model of Alcohol Use.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67.5 (1995): 990–1005. Print.

Duval, Thomas S., and Robert A. Wicklund. A Theory of Objective Self-Awareness. New York: Academic, 1972.

Hull, Jay G., and Richard D. Young. “Self-Consciousness, Self-Esteem, and Success-Failure as Determinants of Alcohol Consumption in Male Social Drinkers.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44.6 (1983): 1097–109. Print.

Ingram, Rick E. “Self-Focused Attention in Clinical Disorders: Review and a Conceptual Model.” Psychological Bulletin 107.2 (1990): 156–76. Print.

Mor, Nilly, and Jennifer Winquist. “Self-Focused Attention and Negative Affect: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 128.4 (2002): 638–62. Print.

Spradley, James, and David W. McCurdy, eds. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. 13th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2008.