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Why Do So Many Superstars Self-Destruct Like Supernovas?

Super-stardom and fame have a powerful dark side that can undermine longevity.

Posted April 24, 2016

Source: Wikimedia/Creative Commons

In outer space, a supernova is a massive explosion that takes place at the end of a star's life cycle, when the star's inner-core collapses, causing it to self-destruct. Interestingly, as a metaphor, the demise of so many iconic superstars here on Earth, has parallels in the cosmos.

Like millions of people around the world, I’ve spent the past few days mourning the death of Prince (1958-2016) and reflecting on the profound impact his life and music had on me and my peers. Everyone from my generation was deeply impacted by Prince’s omnipresence during the 1980s.

Although the cause of Prince’s death is unconfirmed, his tragic death at 57 is obviously premature and all too common for superstars of his era. Michael Jackson was only 50 when he died in 2009. Whitney Houston was 48 when she died in 2012. In previous generations, Elvis Presley died at age 42. Judy Garland was 47. Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin were all 27 when they passed away.

Karen Carpenter—who sang hauntingly about the loneliness and disconnection associated with Top 40 fame in the aptly titled '70s classic "Superstar"—died at age 32. What causes these superstars to die so young? Of course, I don't have the answer to this question ... That said, in this blog post I'll explore the potential underbelly of the quest for peak experiences and the 'ecstasy' of standing outside oneself that seems to take a deadly toll on the body, mind, and spirit of so many superstars.

Why Have So Many Superstars of the 1980s Died Young?

Bruce Springsteen is one of the few living pop music icons of the 1980s alive today. In one of my all-time favorite anthems,“Growin’ Up,” Springsteen prophetically touches on superstardom when he sings, “I took month long vacations in the stratosphere, and you know it’s really hard to hold your breath ... My feet, they finally took root in the Earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars.”

The sentiment of these Springsteen lyrics remind me of the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who once said, "Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes harder, the coldness increases, responsibility increases.” For some reason, it seems like Bruce Springsteen has managed to stay down to earth and grounded despite being a superstar.

Obviously, only a handful of human beings will ever know the phenomena of existing in the supernatural stratosphere and spotlight of superstardom or traveling to the stratosphere of our planet. Coincidentally, the day that Prince died, I spent the afternoon working on a Psychology Today blog post, "Wow! The Life-Changing Power of Experiencing Profound Awe," before I heard he'd died. That post is based on the ‘overview effect’ that astronauts describe after seeing Earth from space.

This morning, as I was watching a video of Prince perform “Purple Rain” at the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2007, I was struck by how polar opposite it must feel to be a superstar in the "petri dish" of a spotlight on center stage, compared with the anonymity of viewing the entire Earth from a space capsule.

Why would the experience of viewing earth from outer space be so life-affirming . . . while being in the limelight on center stage in front of the entire world be so potentially self-destructive? Living in the spotlight with millions of anonymous screaming fans must short-circuit your sympathetic nervous system on some levels.

The Dark Side of Peak Experiences and the Underbelly of Superfluidity

Abraham Maslow defined peak experiences as, "exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter." Clearly, superstars of pop music have endless peak experiences anytime they're on tour. And these people seem to have the power to become conduits for some type of outside energy force that is mysterious but tangible to anyone witnessing them perform live.

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On a much, much smaller scale, the self-transcendence I experienced while doing seemingly 'superhuman' things as an athlete—such as breaking a Guinness World Record by running 153.76 miles non-stop in 24 hours—was always marked by a point when it felt as if my energy was no longer coming from inside my body, but rather as if I'd become a conduit for some infinite and eternal 'Source' of energy outside my body. I describe this phenomena as superfluidity. Because I've experienced superfluidity in sports, I look for it in musical performers.

I borrowed the term superfluidity from the world of quantum physics. I define superfluidity as the highest state of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined as "flow." Based on my life experience, superfluidity is an episodic experience in which your mind, body, and brain function in an ego-less state of "super flow" marked by zero friction, zero viscosity, and zero entropy between thoughts, ideas, and movements.

Unfortunately, having a peak experience can lead to an unexpected blasé feeling of dissatisfaction. Peggy Lee sums up the malaise you can feel in the aftermath of a peak experience in her song, "Is that All There Is?" The song was inspired by the existential story Disillusionment by Thomas Mann.

Although, I have no idea what if feels like to be famous, I do know from my small-time experiences through sports that standing alone on a mountaintop with a trophy can fill you with a sense of rapture for a few minutes, but it also creates a lonely vacuum. After just about every athletic triumph or ultra-endurance odyssey, I generally felt an existential sense of sadness when I had to re-enter Earth's stratosphere and the daily grind of the work-a-day world.

The trap was that the real world seemed extraordinarily boring after these types of adventures... but in order to get the same rush I had to go “ever higher” much like mountain climbers who self-destruct when they catch 'summit fever.' In my mind, these phenomenon are all interconnected somehow. I'm not sure exactly how... but I have a hunch there is something worthwhile in connecting these dots.

As an example, I realized after breaking a Guinness World Record that there was no place higher for me to go as an athlete. At the time I was 38. I knew I had to retire from sports and reinvent myself as a writer and parent, otherwise, my pursuit of self-transcendence and superfluidity would inevitably lead to my demise. For me, peak experiences became like a drug that took me so high that I lost touch with reality. I describe this phenomena on pps. 38-39 of The Athlete’s Way,

“After twenty-three straight hours of running ... I lost all sense of time and space and could only take in scattered bits of stimuli, sounds and impulses of energy from the crowd. Not even music penetrated. Nothing was being processed by my conscious brain. it was like a deep sleeping dream. I was outside my body, but there was no conscious fear. I imagine that is what it must feel like to die. It was an extraordinary experience. I don’t regret it, but also would never in a million years subject myself to do it again.

For the last hour of the 24 hour run, I don’t really remember anything, but I ran for another hour at seven miles per hour. I had no idea where I was, what direction I was facing, what time of day it was, or who I was. My ego was gone... It was surreal to watch myself on the NY-1 news loop on the TV from the ICU later that morning witnessing something I had no recollection of. I was catheterized and on the verge of kidney failure with CPK levels of 176,700 “international units” per liter (normal is 24 to 195 IU/L).

The saddest lesson I learned from my post-Guinness World Record blood work was that, in an attempt to squeeze every ounce of passion from my body, my heart had begun to eat itself. That sucked. For me there was now no place further to go as an athlete. I could never turn back and experience shorter races with the same sense of passion and adventure I once had. There was a loss of innocence that couldn’t be undone. I had to move on to something else. I had pushed the quest for adventure to the point of self-destruction.”

Have you ever experienced a sense of disillusionment following a peak experience? My disillusionment after peak experiences pushed me to continually raise the bar as an ultra-endurance athlete by running, biking and swimming ever-farther, faster, and harder. That said, at a certain point nothing was ever enough to fulfill me.

Luckily, based on my personal history of alcohol and substance abuse combined with my aching to break free from the daily grind by piercing through to a state of feeling superfluid—I know that I would be a prime candidate for opioid addiction. I’ve taken so many alcohol and drug-fueled trips to Pluto over the years ... One reason I’ve avoided opiates and heroin at all costs throughout my lifespan is that I’d probably become a junkie overnight. I have absolutely zero interest in self-destructing that way.

As Billie Holiday once said, “If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or living in an iron lung. If you think you need stuff to play music or to sing, you’re crazy. It can fix you so you can’t play nothing or sing nothing."

Conclusion: "You're a Superstar. Yes, That's What You Are."

Recently, an interviewer asked Madonna how she described herself. She responded, “a survivor.” As I was growing up, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, and Madonna were the three superstars who had the most profound impact on my psyche. Fortuitously, on a rainy night in 1983, I went to see Madonna perform at a small gay club in Boston called the “Metro” and it changed my life.

In my book acknowledgements I give Madonna a shout out saying, “Thank you for laying the brain chips of excellence and fearlessness in my head when I was seventeen and for being rocket fuel during every workout ever since.” On the album Like a Prayer, Madonna performs a song that she co-wrote with Prince, “This Is Not a Love Song.”

In closing, I’ve included the live version of the title track from the 1990 Blond Ambition World tour from that album. Although, this song is decades old, it’s still one of the best examples of superfluidity in motion. This performance also serves as a reminder that it's possible for a superstar to achieve superfluidity without self-destructing like a supernova.

To read more on this topic, check out my Psychology Today blog posts,

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