Hugh Laurie: I Experimented With Vicodin
I’m probably a network television executive’s worst nightmare, in that I very rarely watch network TV. Pretty much the only time I tune in is for a sporting event, or when one of my kids is watching something like Celebrity Apprentice (yeah, I know, but I gotta see if Trace Adkins takes the whole thing). There is one exception…House.
House has been a recent addition to my viewing habits, but a welcome one. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise, Dr. Gregory House is the head of a team of diagnosticians at a teaching hospital, who’s patients typically come to them after having failed to receive a diagnosis, or an incorrect diagnosis, at other hospitals. He’s cranky, irritable, egotistical, cynical, unorthodox, curmudgeonly, and a medical genius. Oh, and he also abuses Vicodin, due to a past infarction in the quad muscle of one of his legs (the dead muscle was removed), which requires him to use a cane and keeps him in constant pain. While this addiction hasn’t caused his grating personality, it doesn’t help it any.
Hugh Laurie, the ruggedly handsome, extremely talented, and versatile British actor who plays the doctor, has recently admitted to experimenting with Vicodin to get a better feel for his character:
Not that he’s been labeled a realistic Method actor before, but Hugh Laurie admits he attempted to get closer to the character he portrays on House — by experimenting with Vicodin, the strong painkiller to which Dr. Gregory House is addicted.
“I wouldn’t recommend it — we have to be careful,” Laurie, 48, tells Britain’s Radio Times magazine, “But then again … if you’re not in pain it gives a floaty, pleasurable feeling.”
I haven’t been able to find the rest of the interview (it is advertised as being in the new issue, so maybe it just isn’t online yet…I’ll have to visit my local bookstore).
While I believe that the show provides a balanced view of House’s drug addiction, (he doesn’t believe his addiction is a big deal, since it doesn’t interfere with his work, while it is obvious to all around him that it is…however, no viable alternatives are suggested or tried, other solutions having been attempted and discarded), and I don’t see the show glamorizing his drug usage in any way, I am uncomfortable with this admission that Hugh tried Vicodin and admitted that yeah, they do make you feel good. If you’ve ever taken one, you already know how they make you feel, so that’s no big surprise. I don’t necessarily think some kid is going to think it’s okay because some actor who isn’t on a teen drama did it, I’m just uncomfortable with the whole thing.
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem that he’s repeated the experiment.
His father was a doctor, and Hugh has a view on that which is one of the most balanced I’ve heard:
Your dad was a doctor. What would he have thought of House?
He couldn’t have been more different to House. He was a hero to me. A very gentle man who would take any amount of time with patients.
You never thought about going into medicine?
I think I was too lazy to be a doctor. I do feel bad that now I’m pretending to do what my dad did and getting paid more for it than he ever did.
Just don’t repeat that little experiment with the Vics and we’ll be fine. I have to get my weekly dose of the good doctor, you know. It hurts when I do this…
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I love Hugh Laurie. I love Dr. House. I love Vicodin. Heck, who doesn’t?
Lucky for me, I’m not some Hollywood star, so I have to actually be sick and in an excruciating amount of pain from losing a limb to get a Vicodin from my doctor.
Comment by crazymom — March 17, 2008 @ 12:22 pm
TBH, Vicodin didn’t do much for me. I mean, it took away the post-surgery pain I was experiencing, and that was pretty great? But there was no “high” to it; there was no “floaty” sensation; I felt exactly like myself, albeit a bit freer of my usual physical aches.
Comment by AF — March 18, 2008 @ 11:33 pm