It's not fucking demons.

[whatsthatinyourhand]

Just reading the news about Matthew Perry's death and keep reading about how he had demons. He didn't have fucking demons. He had an illness. People wouldn't describe having recurring cancer as 'having demons'.
It's the same thing. He didn't choose to be ill or be an addict. I know this thread is not going to make a difference to anything or anyone but the distinction is important.
I have no idea whether he had 'demons' or not but addiction was not one of them.

I think it's a sensitive way of referring to personal struggles with certain issues such as MH, addiction ect....I don't think people are downgrading the severity of the illness but acknowledge that addiction in particular is like a demon because it can be triggered so easily even when people have years of sobriety behind them.

It’s called the demon of depression. It has been for years.

But since the fourth century, Christian tradition has diagnosed a set of behaviours, attitudes, and dispositions that overlap with it in many ways. One of the most long-lasting metaphors used to talk about depression is the noonday demon.

This kind of thing usually annoys me but this actually doesn’t. It’s a figure of speech, not meant literally - no one thinks demons were involved. Everyone knows addiction is an illness.

Most people saying that about him are just using it as a metaphor for mental health/addiction issues that he couldn't easily escape from.

I've not heard anyone saying it in any other sense like blaming it on him being literally possessed or something.

Oh for goodness sake OP really?

I’m not sure I agree that addiction is a disease. It’s also not a case of a moral failure. It’s a habit, that causes a change to the brain, but that doesn’t make it an illness.

I read there were no drugs found at the scene

It's a metaphor. Are you just choosing to be pedantic because it sets you off in some way? You recognise that he had an illness. Why zone in so hard on a metaphorical term? Is it just not okay to you to describe it as such? Do you have "demons" you're denying? It's literally a figure of speech. Explain why this aggravates you to this extent.

Ok. I'm clearly in the minority here.

But just because we've done something for a very long time doesn't mean we should carry on doing it. It minimises the illness of addiction. When people started referring to people as having demons - they genuinely believed they did - that they were possessed.

Which came first - the mental health or the addiction? - it's impossible to say as they are so closely linked. But it 'others' the person we talk about. I'm not just talking about Matthew Perry but addiction as an illness generally.

I do have a close family member who is an addict which is probably why I have spent time thinking about it and why I was triggered.

I was saddened to hear of MP's death. I'm old enough to have watched Friends in my 20s first time round.

It is good that people are talking about it and I particularly liked his ex fiancé talking about the benefits of Al Anon - an incredible, life-changing organisation (for me anyway).

Any other comments or thoughts welcome.

I hadn't thought of it but actually I think I agree with you OP

@Moderateorgoodoccasionallyverypoor "It’s called the demon of depression. It has been for years."

No reason to carry on calling it that though! I'm with @whatsthatinyourhand on this one.

Doesn't everyone have demons of some kind,? were his demons purely referring to his substance addiction? I don't think so, I'm sure his last girlfriend thought he was coping with other kinds of drmons as well

YABU, and deliberately obtuse. Plus, f you want to start a thread shaming people for using offensive language, don't use offensive words (and I don't mean "demons") in the thread title. If you're triggered into a sweary tantrum by perfectly normal and uncontroversial figures of speech, you may wish to stay away from not just the internet but from everything ever written.

My contribution...

Are you objecting to my use of the word 'fucking'? In which case Mumsnet is probably not the place for you.

I think we should stop referring to people who have mental health/ addiction problems as having 'demons'.

I'm not being obtuse.

I understood this as meaning that the demons were his childhood trauma, which resulted in self harming behaviours such as ending all his relationships to avoid him ever being rejected and alcohol and drug addictions.

YABU, having 'demons' just gives a way to describe illnesses that aren't easily tangible, you can't point to addiction in your body, you can't see it coming/flaring up and you have no tangible cure/remission period so it's like a 'demon' that occurs out of the blue sometimes.

Even with recurrent cancer you'd be able to check how it's doing, have a remission period, have regular checks to see if it's coming back, you don't get that with alcoholism. You wouldn't have just one really bad day, be walking down a street, pass a pub and suddenly be thrown into the depths of a severe cancer episode.

Not minimising cancer, that's a whole other world of awful, but they are illnesses that work in very different ways so can be described differently.

It's supposed to be a diplomatic way of setting it apart from something like cancer without trivialising it. I don't have any objection.

Was trying to hook up with a 19 year old, part of his illness? Possibly - but he had more than just addiction issues

I find it a bit annoying too OP. It’s such a cliche for starters and it carries religious connotations that I don’t really care for. (I too have ‘demons’ but I don’t ever use that phrase for myself).

Demons avoids having to spell out past trauma and shame family/break privacy.

Someone with a neglectful or abusive childhood- it isn’t just them affected, they have siblings who would prefer not to be outed.
Someone with sexual trauma in their background, it starts a witch hunt for ‘who hurt them?!’.

Demons is a safer way of describing something which I think we all recognise.

Many people with addiction issues do have ‘demons’ - awful scary dark uncomfortable and painful thoughts/memories etc which they can not deal with and so displace and surpress with their drug ( or even activity) of choice.

I think it is compassionate to acknowledge this.

Yabvu op.

I suffer with depression, diagnosed with EUPD due to childhood trauma, and 2 abusive relationships and an emotionally distant marriage and have a complicated relationship with alcohol as a way to cope.

I ABSOLUTELY feel that referring to these issues as demons is a shorthand way of describing the way these issue can posses and consume you.

Nobody is suggesting it's not an illness by using these terms. They're a descriptive way of illustrating the stranglehold that poor mental health can have, which can lead to substance abuse.

I find it useful. You don't, both are acceptable viewpoints.

For me, it’s similar to all the “battling” and other war language we use in relation to cancer. Even though you don’t have any agency over how your body reacts to cancer and/or its treatment. As someone who has had cancer this irritates me quite a lot but I understand why people do it.

I think the term is quite a good and compassionate one. It suggests the idea of a battle in one's head, pointing quite sharply to the pain and conflict involved in addiction. It quietly implies the existence of the part of the person that is battling 'the demons', battling against all of the behaviours for which unsympathetic or exhausted people around him might be blaming him.

The battle in one's head is where addiction is located. Much as some people (the 'stand up to cancer' brigade) would like to say that cancer is a battle (implying that patients who die aren't fighting hard enough) it really isn't. So it makes perfect sense to use the demon metaphor for addiction not cancer.

Sure, it's a cliche, and that does make it annoying, especially for the people who really feel the death of a particular celebrity. But it's journalism, nothing more personal or poetic.