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that you might have interpreted this as meaning that
you were schizophrenic, but diagnostically it means a
personality disorder characterised by “extreme shyness
and oversensitivity to others”.
WS: I did know that, but the same diagnosis had borderline
personality written down as well which would
be another form of that. But, increasingly I’ve come to
view addiction itself as a mimetic illness in that way – it
mimics other psychopathologies. People who essentially
have addictive personalities are diagnosed as manic
depressive or schizophrenic or certainly depressive.
What they really are is addicts. The addiction decides,
if you think of it as an autonomous thing, to pretends
to be another pathology because the addict finds it
bizarrely more comfortable to think of themselves as
schizophrenic or manic depressive or whatever, rather
than confront the fact that they are an addict which of
course means that they’re going to have to stop doing
what they want to do above all.
CH: So are you shy and sensitive?
WS: I think I am still quite shy. A lot of the extroversion
or flamboyance is always a compensation. It’s better to
tough it out rather than sit there cowering.
CH: Did you retreat from the limelight after being
found snorting heroin aboard John Major’s plane during
the 1997 election?
WS: No, not at all. Two things happened on that front.
One was that I didn’t go to ground which was useful.
BUY Will Self books online from and
In fact, I counter-attacked. I rolled with the punch in
the initial aftermath. Doing Have I Got News For You
was quite frankly a calculated thing to defuse criticism.
I think that there’s a certain level at which English or
British society operates as a kind of particularly beastly
lower sixth form common room. If I’d gone to ground
at that point I think I would have been in trouble. And
it did serve to defuse interest in it.
The other thing is cleaning up from drugs. It made me
less interesting to people in that kind of prurient way.
And there’s always that level in the media and society
as a whole just as the papers are full of stories about
illicit drugs and strange sexual practices so that was
the basic voyeuristic level of interest in me as someone
who got completely fucked up on drugs and booze.
And if you’re not doing that anymore then you’re not
vulnerable in that way.
CH: Have you read your brother Jonathan’s book, Self
Abuse, which is partly about growing up in what he
sees as a dysfunctional family. Can you comment?
WS: Well, I can’t. I have read it, but I made a pact
with myself not to comment on it publicly because
I just don’t do that stuff. What I can say in answer
to the question is that there are a lot of factual inaccuracies
in it.
CH: The introduction to Feeding Frenzy refers to a
cabal of restaurateurs who wanted shot of you saying
you’d tried to buy drugs off the doorman of his
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