Those were the wise words of Chris Rock to all fathers everywhere. The one duty of a father, he said, was to keep their daughter away from a career stripping.
It's probably redundant to add, keep her out of porn too. That's sort of implicit in what he said. Yet increasingly, the San Fernando Valley in California is inundated with girls who think that they might have found a back door to fame by whoring themselves on camera.
I was watching a documentary the other night about Ron Jeremy, the world's best known male porn star, and I found it tragicomic, poignant and ultimately depressing.
Here's a man who is engaging, warm, friendly and self-deprecating. A man from a good New York Jewish family, who works like a navvy even at 50 plus. A man who many other men believe has had the best life in the world.
Yet he's lonely, depressive, and ultimately frustrated in his lifetime ambition to make it in mainstream movies as an actor.
That got me thinking: if that's how life ended up for the industry's success story, how did others fare in porn? Then I found this blog, which tracks porn stars after their career. And the answer to my question was revealed. And it was frightening.
Sure, Stormy Daniels is running for Senate and Jenna Jameson is a millionairess. But what about all the others? Let's start with Chasey Lain, who was once so well known that she had a top 10 hit written about her.
Now a crackpipe ho. Pretty tragic. But she's still alive. Which is more than can be said for:
Billy London: murdered, his head and feet found in a dumpster
Marilyn Chambers: heart attack after taking prescription meds
Bryan Kocis: murdered by two other gay porn actors
Buck Adams: repeated heart attacks caused by drug and alcohol abuse led to his death at 52
David Wasserman: suicide
Missy: dead of a drug overdose at 41
Anastasia Blue: dead, apparently from drug use
Megan Lee: suicide by gunshot wound at 26
Melba Bruce: dead in her thirties in mysterious circumstances
Miyouki Asou: suicide at 22, believing porn had ruined her life
Paige Summers: drug overdose at 27
Star Stowe: murdered by a serial killer at 41
Elisa Bridges: drug overdose at 28
Dorothy Stratten: murdered
Lea de Mae: died of brain cancer at 27
Kathy Harcourt: found shot in the head, possibly self-inflicted
Vanessa Freeman: murdered at 30 by her boyfriend
Angela Devi: suicide by hanging at 30
Naughtia Childs: found dead at bottom of a stairwell, either suicide, murder or accidental death while tripping on LSD
Trinity Loren: overdosed at 34
Rene Bond: dead at 44 from liver cirrhosis
Rebecca Steele: died penniless in a motel room from a drug overdose at 42, while suffering from full-blown AIDS
Taylor Summers: murdered by photographer in possible snuff movie shoot
Terri Diver: dead at 29 from a drug overdose
Sheridan: wiped out in car crash at 20
Lolo Ferrari: died from 'mechanical suffocation' at 4o, husband spent time in prison for it.
Lisa de Leeuw: dead from AIDS at 34
Eva Lux: heroin overdose at 32
Britney Madison: died in car crash at 21
Chanel Price: overdosed at 35
Zoe Zane: murdered aged 18
Cal Jammer: shot himself aged 34
Haley Paige: dead of an overdose, boyfriend committed suicide before he could be questioned as to whether he had murdered her
Nancee Kellee: hanged herself
Alex Jordan: found hanging in her own closet, suicide or auto-erotic asphyxiation suspected
Savannah: shot herself aged 23
Julie Robbins: died in a car crash possibly caused by her being impaired at the wheel aged 26
Linda Wong: drug overdose at 36
Kristi Lynn: died in a car crash, suspected to be drunk at the time of driving
Shauna Grant: shot herself aged 20
Chloe Jones: died penniless of liver failure caused by alcohol and Vicodin abuse aged 29
Jon Dough: Suicide by deliberate overdose aged 43
And others are alive, but clearly damaged:
Kay Parker: believes she's been alive for 6,000 years.
Lori Michaels: faked her own death to avoid porn fan stalkers
Houston: former drug addict, cancer sufferer, now a Christian, sacked from her job because of her porn past
Alisandra: arrested for employing underage girls as strippers
Janine Lindemulder: jailed for tax evasion and lost custody of her kid
Tommy Saxx: jailed for credit card fraud
Fleur Brown: crack addict, jailed for trying to sell the virginity of a 13 year old
Hyapatia Lee: suffering from multiple personality disorder following the trauma of her porno experience
Jack Venice: jailed for raping a college girl
Max Hardcore: jailed for over three years for abusing women in his videos
Tony Eveready: jailed for possession of cocaine and guns
Danielle Rush: crippled in a car crash
Barbara Dare: broke and living with her parents in her late 40s
JR Carrington: a prostitute in a Nevada brothel
Marilyn Starr: convicted and jailed for insider trading
Melissa Walker: jailed for attempted murder
I probably didn't need to reproduce so many names. But I wanted to counter any charge that I was cherrypicking horror stories here.
Sure, some porno stars get out alive and relatively well. Though who knows what's going on inside their heads?
But this lengthy list of casualties has some common threads running through it: drug abuse, suicide, criminality, suspect car accidents, murder.
Given the small number of porn stars, and the incredibly young ages some of these people died at, it seems to me that one of the best ways to preserve your life to a respectable age would be to avoid porno as a career choice.
Let's go back to Chasey Lain before I finish. She was the subject of the Bloodhound Gang's 1990 hit 'Ballad of Chasey Lain' in 1990. But nearly two decades on, she's still apparently doing porn, when her crackpipe addiction permits her to perform.
She has a son. She's still not even 40. But like others on this list, she'll be dead or jailed soon enough, judging by the video above.
I'm no prude and I'm not judgemental. I'm not a big fan of porno generally. It's monotonous and sort of gross sometimes. But it's not a $10 billion industry for nothing. People like it and buy it and use it all the time.
Someone's making that $10 billion, but it's clearly not the performers. Not those who died through murder or suicide or overdose. Not those in jail, or ill, or mad. Not even relatively successful and affluent people like Ron Jeremy or Jenna Jameson.
And whoever's making the money clearly doesn't give a shit for the performers, who to them are as dispensible as the tissues they wipe down their sets with when their done filming.
I recently came across a campaign against cocaine which berated coke users for being 'selfish' because something like 3 square metres of rainforest is cleared to produce every gram or so of the drug.
What a species of people we are, who care more for trees than we do for people.
Porno can be bad for people who consume it, since it can become addictive and replace genuine affection and sexuality in people's lives.
But it is far more destructive to those who perform in it. When will we see an anti-porn campaign that is based, not on Christian disgust or feminist outrage, but on genuine concern for the people being damaged by the industry?
Do we really care more for Brazilian trees than we do for flesh and blood people?
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Monday, August 03, 2009
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Suicide is painful
It's world mental health day today.
Normally, I'm don't go in for makey-uppy designated days. After all, Mother is mother all year round and not just some random Sunday chosen by greeting card manufacturers. And it's the same with this day. People suffering from mental ill health do so any time of the year, not just today.
Perhaps someone might want to tell Minister Tim O'Malley (pictured right, staring into space as usual.)
But at least it gives wonderful organisations like The Samaritans and Aware the chance to remind the majority of us who teeter just the right side of insanity most of the time that there is a minority out there who aren't coping.
Among the statistics to emerge today is that one in 13 Irish students suffer from clinical depression. Unlucky for some indeed.
You have to wonder what is really going on in a country experiencing unprecedented wealth, affluence and opportunity when the cream of the crop, the educated, intelligent golden youth, are suffering depression in their thousands and taking their own lives by the hundreds annually.
Last month, two brothers took their own lives in Belfast. One killed himself suddenly, without warning to friends or family, causing the inevitable tidal wave of grief, anger and agony that such deaths always do.
Within weeks, a matter of days really, his brother followed his example. This tragedy, one that is played out in hundreds of Irish homes every year, was particularly acute for the Mailey family, as they had lost not one cherished son but two.
Bravely, the boys' parents spoke out in the media about their unimaginable loss and anguish, in the hope that their pain might alert those suffering from depression to reach out and seek help.
But they did not spare their anger in describing how Mark, suffering dreadfully from the loss of his beloved brother, sought help from doctors and hospitals, only to be fobbed off with weeks of waiting and a handful of tranquilisers.
I fear that their words will fall on many deaf ears, including those who most need to listen - the politicians mismanaging mental health services and the disturbed, depressed and isolated young people who are suffering from mental ill health.
Years ago I ran an information and support service for people bereaved by suicide. I did this voluntarily, but it cost me a lot of money I didn't have.
I did it because people who have lost a loved one to suicide are many times more likely to die by their own hands than the general populace. And at that time in Ireland, there was little or no information, no group support meetings, and certainly no state funding for such services.
I was literally deluged. People who had lost brothers, sisters or parents decades earlier contacted me in tears, the pain as vivid and the loss as acute as it was when the suicide occurred. And then there were the people who had only just lost someone, often a child, and didn't know who to turn to.
The priest offered prayers, the doctor pills. The state offered nothing. The community turned away in an embarrassed silence from them. They came to me. It quickly became apparent that I needed to find counsellors, and lots of them, and to organise support groups for the suicide bereaved.
And I needed funds. But back then, over a decade ago, the state wasn't interested. I couldn't get the funding. I ran out of cash and beyond. I had to close the service and get a job to pay off the debts. In the meantime, the suicide rate hit record levels.
The Government might try to tell you that things have changed since, but they haven't. Last year, the Irish Minister with responsibility for Mental Health - that's the dozy looking chap pictured above - told the Dail "[the] constant reiteration and repetition about the problems in the mental health services is becoming a bit tiresome."
Amazingly, no paranoid schizophrenic unable to access proper care has chosen to kill Minister Tim O'Malley yet. Even more amazingly, he's STILL minister with reponsibility for mental health.
And while we do now have suicide support groups dotted like oases of mental calm around the country, the vast majority of money attached to suicide goes towards medical research. Let me explain something very simply so that even Dim O'Malley will understand:
Suicide is caused by people killing themselves. That's all there is to it. How do you stop people killing themselves? Well, try funding the mental health services for starters.
Mental health funding in the Republic of Ireland has deteriorated to such an extent that disturbed children are held as in-patients in adult psychiatric wards. And they now intend to sell off the grounds of psychiatric hospitals just to pay for the next few years service, such is the demand and the historic lack of investment.
Surely it is now time to divert some of our affluence away from material goods and towards crucial services like these. If you can't get proper help when you need it and reach out for it, like Mark Mailey did in Belfast last month, or if you seek it when young enough only to find yourself in an adult psychiatric ward, what does that say about the morals of the country you are in?
Normally, I'm don't go in for makey-uppy designated days. After all, Mother is mother all year round and not just some random Sunday chosen by greeting card manufacturers. And it's the same with this day. People suffering from mental ill health do so any time of the year, not just today.
Perhaps someone might want to tell Minister Tim O'Malley (pictured right, staring into space as usual.)
But at least it gives wonderful organisations like The Samaritans and Aware the chance to remind the majority of us who teeter just the right side of insanity most of the time that there is a minority out there who aren't coping.
Among the statistics to emerge today is that one in 13 Irish students suffer from clinical depression. Unlucky for some indeed.
You have to wonder what is really going on in a country experiencing unprecedented wealth, affluence and opportunity when the cream of the crop, the educated, intelligent golden youth, are suffering depression in their thousands and taking their own lives by the hundreds annually.
Last month, two brothers took their own lives in Belfast. One killed himself suddenly, without warning to friends or family, causing the inevitable tidal wave of grief, anger and agony that such deaths always do.
Within weeks, a matter of days really, his brother followed his example. This tragedy, one that is played out in hundreds of Irish homes every year, was particularly acute for the Mailey family, as they had lost not one cherished son but two.
Bravely, the boys' parents spoke out in the media about their unimaginable loss and anguish, in the hope that their pain might alert those suffering from depression to reach out and seek help.
But they did not spare their anger in describing how Mark, suffering dreadfully from the loss of his beloved brother, sought help from doctors and hospitals, only to be fobbed off with weeks of waiting and a handful of tranquilisers.
I fear that their words will fall on many deaf ears, including those who most need to listen - the politicians mismanaging mental health services and the disturbed, depressed and isolated young people who are suffering from mental ill health.
Years ago I ran an information and support service for people bereaved by suicide. I did this voluntarily, but it cost me a lot of money I didn't have.
I did it because people who have lost a loved one to suicide are many times more likely to die by their own hands than the general populace. And at that time in Ireland, there was little or no information, no group support meetings, and certainly no state funding for such services.
I was literally deluged. People who had lost brothers, sisters or parents decades earlier contacted me in tears, the pain as vivid and the loss as acute as it was when the suicide occurred. And then there were the people who had only just lost someone, often a child, and didn't know who to turn to.
The priest offered prayers, the doctor pills. The state offered nothing. The community turned away in an embarrassed silence from them. They came to me. It quickly became apparent that I needed to find counsellors, and lots of them, and to organise support groups for the suicide bereaved.
And I needed funds. But back then, over a decade ago, the state wasn't interested. I couldn't get the funding. I ran out of cash and beyond. I had to close the service and get a job to pay off the debts. In the meantime, the suicide rate hit record levels.
The Government might try to tell you that things have changed since, but they haven't. Last year, the Irish Minister with responsibility for Mental Health - that's the dozy looking chap pictured above - told the Dail "[the] constant reiteration and repetition about the problems in the mental health services is becoming a bit tiresome."
Amazingly, no paranoid schizophrenic unable to access proper care has chosen to kill Minister Tim O'Malley yet. Even more amazingly, he's STILL minister with reponsibility for mental health.
And while we do now have suicide support groups dotted like oases of mental calm around the country, the vast majority of money attached to suicide goes towards medical research. Let me explain something very simply so that even Dim O'Malley will understand:
Suicide is caused by people killing themselves. That's all there is to it. How do you stop people killing themselves? Well, try funding the mental health services for starters.
Mental health funding in the Republic of Ireland has deteriorated to such an extent that disturbed children are held as in-patients in adult psychiatric wards. And they now intend to sell off the grounds of psychiatric hospitals just to pay for the next few years service, such is the demand and the historic lack of investment.
Surely it is now time to divert some of our affluence away from material goods and towards crucial services like these. If you can't get proper help when you need it and reach out for it, like Mark Mailey did in Belfast last month, or if you seek it when young enough only to find yourself in an adult psychiatric ward, what does that say about the morals of the country you are in?
For help or support contact Samaritans call 1850 609090 or email jo@samaritans.org
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