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For much of his adult life, Robert Downey Jr., 43, was caught in a ruinous cycle of drug addiction, imprisonment and disgrace. (This post has excerpts from an article in Parade Magazine)

Raised in a show-business family, Downey claims that by 8 he already had used drugs with his dad, a filmmaker.

“I was mercurial and recklessly undisciplined and, for the most part, I was happily anesthetized.”

“You use whatever rationalization you can to justify the fact that you’re not living truthfully,” he observes about substance abuse. “You make this death machine seem glamorous so you can get on to the next moment. But it isn’t glamorous, and it isn’t fun.”

“Now it’s all about becoming rooted in the mundane, in the day-to-day stuff,” he continues. “Life is 70% maintenance. I think of myself as a shopkeeper or a beekeeper. I’m learning the business of building a life.”

“Instead of getting instant gratification by getting high, I push my nose as far into the grindstone as I can. The honey, the reward, is the feeling of well-being, the continuity, the sense that I am walking toward a place I want to go.”

“I used to be so convinced that happiness was the goal,” Downey says, “yet all those years I was chasing after it, I was unhappy in the pursuit. Maybe the goal really should be a life that values honor, duty, good work, friends and family.”

“People rise out of the ashes because, at some point, they are invested with a belief in the possibility of triumph over seemingly impossible odds.”

Photo credit: Lorenzo Agius For PARADE

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