It probably isn’t easy to kick the booze habit when you have your own eponymous brand of absinthe, but that isn’t Marilyn Manson’s only hurdle in getting clean. He’s just too famous for AA.
“I went to one AA meeting and I got asked for an autograph. I got pissed off,” Manson told the Mirror’s Gavin Martin. “I think you should be able to go in there wearing a mask and say I’m an alcoholic, I’m anonymous. That’s a real alcoholic. They told me that the definition of an alcoholic is someone who drinks, screws up their life and knows it, but continues doing it. Well I screwed up my life up before I drank!”
This sort of talk does seem to confirm Trent Reznor’s recent claim that “drugs and alcohol now rule [Manson’s] life and he’s become a dopey clown,” but Reznor did also say of his former friend/collaborator, “he pretended to be f—-ed up a lot when he wasn’t.” As Prefix’s Nick Neyland notes, is Manson faking it for attention to promote his new record The High End of Low?
My guess is that he actually is messed up and needs help. For example, when his manager refused to get him drugs, “my eyes watered,” Manson said. “Then he asks me if I am OK! It’s ridiculous. It should be, ‘Here’s the mirror – and now are you OK?’”