Photo credit: Courtesy of the author
“I always like Spiderman’s line ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ With great fame, which is the offshoot of it if you become a star, you have the ability to do stupid things and get away with it. But as we’ve seen time and time again lately…… it doesn’t matter if you’re a superstar athlete, or a superstar actor, or singer, or dancer……. if you cross over into addiction, it can ruin your life and literally take it away from you,” said Dr. William Horton, author of Quantum Psychology, Mind Control, and The Alcohol Addiction Solution.
On the heels of the Oscars, which included an ‘In Memoriam’ of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dr. Horton talked to Hollywood on the Potomac about Phoenix, Ledger, Monteith, Robert Downey, Jr., Lindsay Lohan and others in context with alcohol, heroin, and addition solutions for what he calls the talented but tormented.
“What I think is fascinating about some of these cases is that whenever one of these super celebrities go, there’s an outrage, like with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and investigations and all these people were arrested right afterwards. But the fact of the matter is every day in New York City, at least one person a day overdoses on heroin. There’s two or three people dying from heroin and other drugs in just New York City, and there’s no outrage. All of a sudden, and I hate to sound this way, but when a rich, talented white guy ODs, suddenly the police can’t act fast enough.” He admits, however, that it does draw attention to the problem and that it is a reminder to all addicts and that is a good thing.
Horton doesn’t think that leniency, such as the case with Ms. Lohan, is the solution. His best case scenario would be more like the very talented Robert Downey, Jr. who went to prison. “It was the best I think that ever happened to him was when he served time in a real prison. The judge had enough of him and put him in a regular jail, and after that he seemed to change. Because again, I think people make the mistake that they think of these celebrities – maybe because they’re extremely good looking or extremely talented, and then, of course, now they’re rich and famous – as somehow being special. But if they’re an addict, I always say addicts usually die horribly and alone.”
“I’ve treated a few celebrities and a few athletes, top tier athletes,” he explained. “They weren’t superstar athletes, the ones I worked with. They were in the majors. They were in the pro level and they knew enough that they had to straighten out their lives, because each year in the majors is probably worth five or six times as much as playing triple-A baseball. Of course, football has no minor league. So, yeah, they were very motivated, the ones I got to. They tried some traditional treatments and it didn’t seem to work as well.” In the long term with his methods, four out of the five have done quite well. “You lose contact though after treatment, so I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, they all did great.’ I’ve worked with a lot more, but once treatment’s over I’m not going to call people up and track them down.”
So what exactly does Dr. Horton do to treat addiction? What is his method? “I train people in what they call neurolinguistic programming, along with the hypnosis,” he explained. “Neurolinguistic programming is basically high tech hypnosis. It’s how your brain works instead of why, and it changes things inside your mind. Classical psychology makes changes by using therapeutic methods where it uses consciousness. And what NLP does is bypasses the consciousness.
I don’t really spend too much time focusing on the past and what got you in the shape that you’re in. We focus on where you are now and where you want to go. And we work with the structure, like how do you make those decisions over and over again. Why do you keep making decisions? Like if we’re using addictions as a model, let’s say you’re addicted to chocolate. So, you could think about like when you think about chocolate, where is it in your head? Is it right in front of you? Is it to the left? Is to the right? Things like that. That’s how your brain is storing chocolate. If we change how your brain is storing chocolate, what you think about chocolate will change by itself. And it’s changing at the subconscious level.” OK, so this might be getting over our intellectual capacity, so we suggest you get the books. Just to lighten up the subject matter Horton sent us the below photo indicating it’s not all about the head. Seems like he does a lot of flying high too, just not the same kind.
“Recovery from addiction is possible,” he concludes. “I’ve seen hundreds, thousands of examples over the years, and so we should use these examples of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, Corey Monteith as markers that you don’t have to go down this path. There is a way out, and it takes the heart of a warrior to sober up and overcome an addiction. The easy thing to do is to stay in the addiction and relapse. The courageous thing to do is to get the help, whether that’s traditional treatment, NLP treatment, some kind of treatment. That takes guts and courage.”
