We’re probably not ever going to live in a world in which Miley Cyrus is not a wildly divisive figure. That’s fine. Certainly her bank account appreciates the good-girl-gone-bad reputation. But one has to look no further back than the past week of Miley’s life to see that she is absolutely a force for good in our modern world.
There’s her new foundation, of course, Happy Hippie, devoted to helping LGBTQ and homeless youth, but in promoting the non-profit, Cyrus distinguishes herself — at least within the media-trained world of celebrity — as something of a radical: rejecting any and all labels imposed on herself or others by a patriarchal society.
Speaking with the Associated Press, she noted that not all her past relationships had been “straight, heterosexual” ones. She told Out she resents the limitations of traditional gender roles: “I don’t relate to what people would say defines a girl or a boy, and I think that’s what I had to understand: Being a girl isn’t what I hate, it’s the box that I get put into.” In Time, she rejects the idea that a person needs to be in a relationship to feel complete. “It has a lot to do with being a feminist, but I’m finally O.K. with being alone,” she says. “I think that’s something we have to talk about more: that you can be alone.”
While these ideas aren’t exactly revolutionary and that third statement especially might sound obvious to an adult, who else is telling young girls they don’t need a man to be human? Rachel ends up with Ross, “You Belong With Me,” even Annie Hall moves on with someone new.
Cyrus’s choice of personal crusade is also special. Homeless LGBTQ youth are one of the most invisible elements of our society, despite accounting for 40 percent of all homeless youth. (In contrast, LGBTQ people make up less than 10 percent of the general American population.) Most end up on the street after being kicked out of their homes simply for who they are, a nearly unimaginable existence most Americans are completely blind to. A person like Miley Cyrus — controversial, boundary-pushing, attention-grabbing — is uniquely positioned to lend these children a voice.
And she’s already done so. At the 2014 VMAs, just one year after she’d ignited the American outrage machine with her performance of “We Can’t Stop”/”Blurred Lines,” Cyrus sent a homeless teen to accept Video of the Year on her behalf. If the 2013 VMAs was Cyrus’s Streetcar Named Desire, the 2014 VMAs was her Sacheen Littlefeather moment. And it took Marlon Brando 22 years to transform from sex symbol into activist.
If all of this highlights more Miley Cyrus the Celebrity and less Miley Cyrus the Artist, look no further than this cover of “Different” she recorded with Joan Jett, in support of Happy Hippie.
Miley has been a lot of things — Disney starlet, the FCC’s worst nightmare — but really, what’s more revolutionary than being exactly yourself, 100 percent of the time?
By Robert Kessler | Yahoo Celebrity
Former Creed Frontman Scott Stapp Says Prescription Drug Abuse Led to Psychotic Episodes
Scott Stapp, the former frontman for Creed, one of the biggest rock bands of the late 90s and early 2000s, was once known for multi-platinum hits like “My Sacrifice,” “With Arms Wide Open” and “Higher.”
Then Stapp became infamous for a very public meltdown that went on for months last year, in which the rocker posted cryptic video messages online about being “penniless” and that the CIA was watching him. He said he placed maniacal calls to 911, the White House and his son’s school, and fired off jarring emails and text messages to family and friends. Meanwhile, Stapp said his bizarre behavior fueled Internet rumors that he was on a drug-fueled downward spiral.
Now, in an exclusive interview on this week’s cover of People magazine and with ABC News, Stapp is revealing for the first time that during a hellish span of about six months he said he suffered manic psychosis from overdosing on prescription drugs.
“I was so out of my mind, delusional, turned on everyone that I loved, made wild and crazy accusations about my wife. I thought I was being followed by the government, I mean, it was a manic paranoid, psychotic episode,” Stapp told ABC News. “I was driving around with … a 12-gauge shotgun in my lap. And I thought that people were trying to kill me.”
“I would have like, maybe a 45-second interval of, ‘What’s going on,’ and then I’d be right back into the psychosis,” he added.
Stapp said his psychosis was so intense that he thought he had been programmed by the CIA — a real-life Jason Bourne — and he would prowl airports looking for suspicious cars.
During his music career, Stapp said he had abused alcohol and harder drugs that landed him in trouble with the law, and said that his years of substance abuse was his attempt to self-medicate to battle an undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
Stapp said he first began to “feel different” in 1998. At the time, Creed’s “Proof of Life” album had just dropped, but Stapp said he was starting to feel down.
“In 1998, I was on top of the world,” Stapp said. “I had four No. 1 singles. My career was taking off. And then all of a sudden, a depression came over me, a debilitating, physical depression.”
“And at that point in time, I went into a walk-in clinic while I was on tour, sought a doctor and got a prescription antidepressant, and that’s really where this journey begins,” he added.
Stapp said he began to battle a cycle of ups and downs, from promoting a new album to feeling depressed and “not focused.” In his 2012 book, “Sinner’s Creed,” Stapp admitted that addiction and depression nearly tore his life apart, leading to a much-publicized 2006 suicide attempt and the disbandment of the band, Creed. The book was supposed to herald his renewed faith and sobriety.
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When he began taking the Adderall, at first “things were fine,” Stapp continued.
Read the whole, extremely interesting article here:
https://gma.yahoo.com/former-creed-frontman-scott-stapp-says-prescription-drug-122307610–abc-news-music.html
By Matt Gutman, Seni Tienabeso and Lauren Effron | Good Morning America