5 things Scott Weiland's ex-wife and kids want you to know about addiction.
The whole thing is worth a read, but here are the five points that really rang true ... and real.
Scott Weiland, former frontman for Velvet Revolver and the amazing '90s band Stone Temple Pilots, was found dead in his tour bus last week.
Image via C Maranon/Wikimedia Commons (altered).
He dealt with addiction his whole life — and it's ultimately what took his life.
In addition to being a rock star, he was also a father and a husband. Here's part of what his ex-wife Mary Forsberg Weiland had to say about his struggles with addiction and his death in a Rolling Stone article.
1. Those who struggle with addiction can be lost to us long before they die.
"This is the final step in our long goodbye to Scott. "
Imagine seeing your loved one basically killing themselves, slowly, over the course of years. When do you start mourning them?
"December 3rd, 2015 is not the day Scott Weiland died. It is the official day the public will use to mourn him, and it was the last day he could be propped up in front of a microphone for the financial benefit or enjoyment of others."
2. There's a fine line between "What a funky artist" and "That person needs hospitalization."
The media frenzy around artists who are clearly struggling doesn't help them get help, even if it helps the artists' bottom line.
"We read awful show reviews, watch videos of artists falling down, unable to recall their lyrics streaming on a teleprompter just a few feet away. And then we click 'add to cart' because what actually belongs in a hospital is now considered art."
3. Love gets very confusing.
"That mess was our father. We loved him, but a deep-rooted mix of love and disappointment made up the majority of our relationship with him. "
4. Life becomes a cover-up.
Think of your friends who are with partners dealing with problems — addiction, workaholism, plain ol' meanness. This is their struggle.
"Even after Scott and I split up, I spent countless hours trying to calm his paranoid fits, pushing him into the shower and filling him with coffee, just so that I could drop him into the audience at Noah's talent show, or Lucy's musical. Those short encounters were my attempts at giving the kids a feeling of normalcy with their dad. "
It's the struggle of so many caregivers — in many cases, wives, moms, and other women. It's the caregiver trying to make everything as OK as possible for their kids. All the time.
5. Knowing that the person affected by addiction basically cannot choose happiness is devastating.
Yes. It's sad for Weiland's wife and children. But in her generosity, she reflects on what's perhaps most devastating of all: the effect of addiction on Weiland while he was alive — the devastating sadness of a person who couldn't find his way through the cloud of addiction to meet the people who loved him in a happier existence.
"Over the last few years, I could hear his sadness and confusion when he'd call me late into the night, often crying about his inability to separate himself from negative people and bad choices. I won't say he can rest now, or that he's in a better place. He belongs with his children barbecuing in the backyard and waiting for a Notre Dame game to come on. We are angry and sad about this loss, but we are most devastated that he chose to give up."
Weiland's ex-wife calls upon his fans to mourn him by choosing to bring happiness into their own lives instead of focusing on nostalgia for a life that had too little of it.
"Our hope for Scott has died, but there is still hope for others," she wrote. "Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it. Skip the depressing T-shirt with 1967-2015 on it — use the money to take a kid to a ballgame or out for ice cream."
This stuff is hard. I so admire this family for coming forward with their truth. By sharing our true stories, even when the telling is hard, we feel less alone, and we are able to help each other more.
<3
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
At least it wasn't Bubbles. 
You just know there's a person named Whiskey out there getting a kick out of this. 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.