Since news broke yesterday of the tragic death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, I’ve watched conversations slowly spring up on social media, mainstream media and in real life around the circumstances of his death. People are talking about the fact he overdosed on heroin and that he left behind three small children under 10.
Had Hoffman died in a car accident or of cancer, the reaction would have been more straightforward. A tragedy, A waste. A shock. Those words are being used about Hoffman’s death too, but bubbling up in certain places has been another emotion: anger.
Anger that he died with a needle in his arm surrounded by bags of heroin. “Selfish” some have claimed. “Self-indulgent.” It seems there’s something about a drug overdose that, for some, partly cancels out the sympathy and empathy they’d normally feel when someone dies.
Fellow actor Jared Padalecki hit Twitter to say what many others were thinking:
Padalecki was resoundingly slammed by people calling him insensitive and he quickly expanded on his initial tweet:
Other celebrities and commentators may not have said it on social media but judging by the number of re-tweets and favourites on Padalecki’s statements, and the numerous times I’ve heard people expressing similar sentiments in the past 24 hours, anger and a lack of sympathy is not an uncommon reaction to a drug overdose.