In a weird moment of blogospheric convergence, I was in the middle of reading this story about the horrors of celebrity drug use when Rannoch Donald emailed me with a scathing comment about it.

The nut of the story is typically hand-wringing and simplistic:

And Rannoch's reaction to it is appropriately bullshit-detecting:

(The "gene therapy" crack actually refers to another story in the news today, about how happiness starts with our genes.)

I'm tempted to say that the problem with drugs isn't that celebrities glamorize them (or "glamorise," as our friends in the UK prefer). It's that old farts make such a BFD out of them. But that would be glib, inaccurate, and unfair to the millions of people around the world whose lives are ruined by drug addiction, often through no fault of their own; they have the bad luck of being the child of addicts, or otherwise related or connected to people whose drug use wreaks collateral damage on everyone in their proximity.

But let's get back to the celebrities:

Fame, in Western civilization, has a narrative structure. You're born to be a god or hero, you perform spectacular feats of strength or bravery or intellect, and then when you get to the top, you screw up. The gods get to remain gods despite their blunders -- the monotony of their immortality has a lot to do with their need to beat the hornet's nest from time to time -- but the mortals or semi-mortals who achieve fame pay a terrible price. The demons that drive them to greatness inevitably get the better of them.

The narrative has different variations for different characters in Greek mythology. The powerful Hercules was able to atone for his youthful indiscretions (and I've got to say, murdering his wife and children gave him a lot more to atone for than your typical actress skipping out on her rehab). But the pathetic Icarus, the impetuous young man who flew too close to the sun, never got that second chance. (Dude never even got laid.)

Today, whether we're talking about sports, entertainment, or politics, we still seek out the basic narrative the Greeks crafted in their poetry and theater. They entertained themselves with stories of fallen heroes for the simple reason that a hero who never stumbles is boring as shit.

The trinity of celebrityhood that I mentioned -- athletes, entertainers, politicians -- provide ready-made fodder for the narrative. The talent, magnetism, energy, and narcissism that drive people into the spotlight are the same qualities that make them likely to screw up at some point. It's just a matter of time.

It could be drugs, it could be sex, it could be money. The younger the celebrities are, and the less deserving of all the attention they're getting (not to mention the money they're making), the more likely it is that the fall will come sooner rather than later.

So let's not kid ourselves: It's not drugs they're glamorizing. It's celebrity itself, the most powerful intoxicant of all.

Thursday blog meat

• I've written a bunch of times about why driving while talking on a cell phone is much more dangerous than it seems if you're the person on the phone (here and here, for starters). Now yet another study makes the same point.
• Another interesting story sent my way by Rannoch: Here's a brain-scanning breakthrough right out of the worst nightmares of our most paranoid science-fiction writers.