Poor Charlie Sheen. Poor, poor, Charlie Sheen.
I don't mean poor as in lacking in dollars, but lacking in sense. It is also poor, poor us who watch close up as a fellow human being mentally implodes.
The enticements to stare are everywhere. The networks extend invitations as does the Internet, social networks, newspapers, magazines, news outlets. Welcome to the asylum.
For those with better things to do or for those named Rip who just awoke from a 20-year nap, Sheen, the actor of the popular weekly comedy series "Two and a Half Men," has had past problems with drugs, alcohol and other behaviors that would get him kicked out of the Boy Scouts.
He has most recently re-emerged in the spotlight as he rants and raves about himself and his two female companions he calls his goddesses.
Generally I try and stay away from the troubled personal lives of stars and starlets. I see enough homegrown tragedy in my own pediatric practice.
But this time the teasing quote on one of the sidebars of a collected news site grabbed my attention, as it was intended to do. But unlike the masses I was curious as a clinician (sure, you say). Sheen said something to the effect that he was tired of pretending that he was not special. Wanting to know how special he was in every way, I tuned into the circus network.
Not being a trained psychiatrist and having never met the man, I come at this distanced analysis with some hesitation.
But if I were a betting doctor I would put money on the fact that this man is crazy. Watching his behavior and listening to him he is a person who is either a convincing actor or a person who is certifiably mentally ill with mania. There is a grandiosity that one reads about in psychiatric textbooks on manic-depressive disorders or other conditions with a delusional feature. At this moment he and Moammar Gadhafi have a lot in common.
While this is sounding to be about Sheen, it is about us. It is about all of us who tune in to this man's disjointed ramblings with the same amusement people used to do at freak shows.
Sheen is the Elephant Man of the Internet. There are all sorts of reasons people are drawn to such display of human dysfunction. I suppose some viewers are sincerely fond of him through his various roles or movies, and are deeply concerned with his well-being. There could be the tender-hearted who place flowers or candles on any and all makeshift memorials they see. They are the Mothers Theresa for the downtrodden famous.
There are also the watchers who are drawn by the display of human mental disorders. They have never seen a person in such a condition with the various characteristics of mania. For them it is not a show but a grand round in psychiatry, and Sheen is the patient being presented. They await the professor to put up a Power Point canned presentation of the various chemical transmitters or the microscopic findings in a brain of someone just like the patient on the screen.
However I suspect that the vast majority of us who tune in to the weirdness of Charlie have a different attraction. We gain something out of this exploitation of a sick man. We know something Sheen doesn't know. He is wacko. It is like going to the zoo and seeing the apes swing from the trees, but we humans are superior. We watch because normal is so boring.
There is a feeling of voyeurism in such peeking. It is a form of pornography that stimulates and excites when we hear and see someone who is totally lacking in normal functions of reason and reality.
If this is so, "God bless poor Charlie and God forgive poor us for staring."
Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com.