Why does Charlie Sheen keep getting high?

"I'm struck by the honesty of the addict determined to resist intervention. The truly rich can do this - think of Michael Jackson's descent into pharmaceutical madness - without real sanctions. But Sheen has had sanctions. He has lost his lucrative career, while also damaging the lives and careers of his colleagues. And yet he still places pure pleasure over self-control. Part of this is obviously a function of how some drugs shut down the super-ego and eventually the ego as well. But part is also a useful admission that these drugs make his life more fun in the short term. People do drugs for a reason. That reason is often intense pleasure to which they become addicted. Acknowledging that side of the equation seems to me to be the first step in fighting for moderation. Anti-drug campaigners who insist that recreational drugs make people miserable miss this. They can make them miserable in the long run, if they abuse them or have no control over them. But in the short run, wheeeee! I have to say it's refreshing in some respects to see someone who will publicly make this point, even as their self-destruction instantly undermines it." — Andrew Sullivan

Phooey. "The honesty of the addict" is not a phrase that anyone with any smarts should be proud to write. Quick lesson: Drug addicts are generally not very honest on the subject of addiction. Lesson over. Charlie Sheen may say he's still having fun and Andrew Sullivan may choose to believe him, but that should not be mistaken for an actual fact in the real world. Sullivan is right that anti-drug campaigning is a waste of everybody's time and money — the whole thing is folly — but mistaken if he thinks that acknowledging the "whee" factor would make the slightest dent in the effectiveneness of that advertising or recovery rates. It would most likely lessen the guilt of non-addicted drug users, which may be what Sullivan is most concerned with here, but if he thinks Sheen is experiencing anything like the "wheee" of a non-addicted user right now, he is also mistaken. Given Sheen's history, in all likelihood, the most he is experiencing right now is the barest twinge of a shadow of a spasm of an echo of a parody of the kind of pleasure he once got. As Walter Kirn puts it:

The problem, though, is that when you look at him, you get this distinct weird feeling that Charlie Sheen is the only person in the whole universe incapable of actually enjoying, actually getting off on in a deep way that really sticks to the neurons afterward, the myriad pleasures of Homo Malibu that were formerly open to Charlie Sheen.

Sheen's statements to the contrary are not to be trusted at all. They are not accurate representations of what he is feeling but statements designed to keep him using, and not because he is experiencing pleasure, but because he is an addict who is addicted. It's got nothing to do with pleasure. And if he ever gets sober it will be because of this fact. If people could still experience pleasure from the drugs they were addicted to, does Sullivan think that anyone would be in recovery?