Risky Business

Until last night, I had nothing against Tom Cruise.

I had nothing for him, either, but I had nothing against him. He was just another movie star whose movies I might or might not see, who happened to be involved right now with a young actress. I thought the whole thing with Katie Holmes was a little bit gross, but hey–she’s of legal age to do whatever she wants with whomever she wants.

Last night, though, I read my latest issue of Newsweek, which had some brief quotes from Tom Cruise’s inteview on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I’d only vaguely heard about the interview, and mostly just that he jumped all over the place proclaiming his love for Katie Holmes. So I read the excerpts with faint interest, until I got to the last bit:

“ON BROOK SHIELDS’S POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION: You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things.”

You can…what? Hang on a minute, did I read that correctly? I read it again. Yes, I’d read it right the first time.

As in all moments of crisis, I turned to my husband.

“Chris, listen to this!” I read the quote out loud to him. “Is he serious?”

“Yeah, he’s a crazy Scientologist,” Chris said, deeply absorbed in more saner reading.

“I remember reading in Reader’s Digest that he said he cured himself of dyslexia through Scientology…”

“No one can cure themselves of dyslexia,” Chris interrupted. “He probably didn’t really have it, or it didn’t really get cured.”

“Yeah, I thought that was kind of a weird thing to say.”

“He’s insane.”

“What does he mean by vitamins, though? What, like every woman with postpartum depression just needs more … more…” I could hardly bring myself to say it, “vitamins?”

“Geez, if only we’d known about this,” I went on, sarcastically. “Give everyone vitamins, that’s the way to do it.”

I read the quote yet again. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, because surely no one could be so stupid as to say what he’d said. “What does he mean, ‘You can use vitamins’? I mean, it’s one thing if he said ‘I’d take vitamins for this if I had it’ but to say ‘you’? Maybe he meant that men can take vitamins to help them deal with a woman who has postpartum. That makes more sense, doesn’t it?”

Chris closed his book and turned off the light. I put down my magazine and switched off the light on my own nightstand.

We lay silently in the dark for a few minutes, but I still couldn’t get his words out of my mind. Maybe I needed to read them in context.

Today I looked online for a transcript, but couldn’t find one. I did, however, find excerpts from his interview with Access Hollywood, in which he’d said similar things about prescription drugs. The more I read, the more horrified I became.

I do think that in some cases, doctors may be too quick to prescribe medication for children, particularly since the effects of at least some anti-depressants are unknown in children.

But to equate doctors who prescribe medication to drug dealers and to say that “with psychiatry, there is no science behind it. And to pretend that there is a science behind it is criminal” — good lord, it ought to be criminal for him to say that!

There is indeed science behind psychiatry, which is why psychiatrists have to go through medical school, just like a surgeon or general physician. The science may not be totally understood yet, but anti-depressants are scientifically formulated, and tested, like any other drug.

But then again, if you’re Tom Cruise, then “any drug is a poison.” So for all you people on heart medication, cholesterol medication, antibiotics and all of that–you need to drop all of that and just take vitamins, according to Tom Cruise.

I’m not quite sure why taking vitamin supplements are fine with him, though. I mean, what’s the difference? Vitamins aren’t regulated, and go through no testing at all. An overdose of certain vitamins can also be lethal, like an overdose of prescribed medication.

If someone has a choice between being healthy and on medication or being healthy without medication, then yeah, I’d say it’d be a no-brainer to choose to be healthy without medication. But things aren’t always that simple. For most people on medication, the choice is between being suicidal/miserable/sick without medication or being better with medication.

And why are we listening to Tom Cruise, anyway? We’re listening to an actor expound upon his own definition of science: “There is a hormonal thing that is going on that is…scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that.”

Tom Cruise is also against pyschologists (who don’t prescribe medication, but engage you in talk therapy). So anti-depressants don’t cure anything, but merely help people cope (coping, apparently, is not a good thing), and talking about the depression is apparently useless as well. So what does work? Tell us, Tom, tell us!

The answer, my friends, is auditing. Auditing is the process of using an e-meter to measure someone’s reaction during therapy. Except you don’t call it therapy, you call it auditing, and for some reason, when you change the name, it becomes science.

I am not a Scientologist. I am not, in fact, religious. I don’t mind when other people have their own beliefs — as long as they don’t try to force it on other people.

If Tom Cruise wants to live his life in ambiguity and lies, that’s his decision. If he wants to take vitamins and not any prescription medication, that’s his decision. If he wants to define science as whatever he determines it to be — you get the picture.

But when he goes trotting around to the media and trying to enforce those beliefs on others, because “I feel responsibility. Because I care, man. I care. I care about you. I care about your children,” well, then that’s when you and I have a problem, Tom.

You can be whatever crackpot you want to be. But when you’re a billionaire actor whom people listen to, for whatever reason, you ought to know better than to go around telling them what to do, what’s truth and fiction, and what isn’t and is good for them. You’ve become the equivalent of an afternoon cartoon show saying “Hey, kids, getting drunk is the only way to live!”

I’m glad Scientology has helped you, Tom, but a belief and opinion is not the same as the truth. You’d have a lot more respect from me if you just spoke about what Scientology did for you personally, what your personal beliefs on medication are, and how happy you are with that little chick from Dawson’s Creek. But when you start making it your mission to reinvent all of us as doctor-shunning, pill-avoiding vitamin eaters, that’s when I start saying I don’t want to see any more of your movies, ever.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | June 1, 2005 | 2:10 pm
Posted in: Rants