"I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck"
About this Quote
It lands like a shrug, but it’s really a confession with the volume turned down. Corey Haim frames addiction in the plainest consumer logic: downers are “better” than uppers because they feel like relief. That casual comparison is the point. He’s not moralizing, not mythologizing, just reporting a kind of desperate math that makes perfect sense when your baseline is panic. “Nervous wreck” does the heavy lifting here: it smuggles in the diagnosis, the untreated anxiety, the sense that the real problem came first and the substances arrived as DIY medicine.
The phrasing also hints at how fame rewires self-perception. Haim grew up in an industry that rewards performance while neglecting stability, where a child star’s distress can be managed, not healed. The quote’s bluntness reads like someone who’s been rehearsing honesty after years of being packaged. “Started on” is especially chilling: it suggests a regimen, an initiation, almost a career path. Addiction isn’t framed as a single bad decision; it’s a sequence that begins the moment sedation becomes the only workable form of calm.
Context matters because Haim’s story has been relentlessly narrated by others - tabloids, managers, the nostalgia machine that keeps ‘80s icons frozen at their peak. Here, he asserts a bleak agency: he chose what worked, short-term. The subtext is that no one offered a better option, and the body will always take the nearest exit from fear, even if it leads straight into another kind of wreckage.
The phrasing also hints at how fame rewires self-perception. Haim grew up in an industry that rewards performance while neglecting stability, where a child star’s distress can be managed, not healed. The quote’s bluntness reads like someone who’s been rehearsing honesty after years of being packaged. “Started on” is especially chilling: it suggests a regimen, an initiation, almost a career path. Addiction isn’t framed as a single bad decision; it’s a sequence that begins the moment sedation becomes the only workable form of calm.
Context matters because Haim’s story has been relentlessly narrated by others - tabloids, managers, the nostalgia machine that keeps ‘80s icons frozen at their peak. Here, he asserts a bleak agency: he chose what worked, short-term. The subtext is that no one offered a better option, and the body will always take the nearest exit from fear, even if it leads straight into another kind of wreckage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anxiety |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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