About a year ago a smart and cheeky piece on addiction changed my perspective.

The last time I thought about taking heroin was yesterday, wrote Russell Brand in 2013.

Sober and drug-clean for a decade, Brand talks with self-deprecating humor about his addictions.

This past week tabloids and twitter are abuzz with news over Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death.

Theories flow like the Thames: why was someone steeped in fame and adoration depressed? Was his death preventable? Should drug-laws be changed?

While the press foments over heroin and Hoffman, Brand writes that it all comes down to just one simple act.

Don’t pick up a drink or drug.

The problem, Brand writes, is that the solution is simple, but it isn’t easy.

He describes how just one glass of wine could send him around the bend:

Even if it began as a timid glass of Chardonnay on a ponce’s yacht, it would end with me necking the bottle, swimming to shore and sprinting to Bethnal Green in search of a crack house.

I look to drugs and booze to fill up a hole in me; unchecked, the call of the wild is too strong.

Hoffman’s story is a sad one indeed; he died like any other addict.

And maybe the death of a celebrity will shine the spotlight on the fact that anyone can be an addict: a high school senior, a bus driver, a store cashier and a dog-walker.

Read Brand’s opinion piece at the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/mar/09/russell-brand-life-without-drugs

Image from http://www.right-turn.org/addiction-is-a-family-disease