If Courtney Love doesn't have borderline personality disorder, she does a good imitation of it. She has had substance abuse, an eating disorder, inappropriate anger and self injury. At one point or another a raft of celebrities have been accused of having this diagnosis: Britney Spears, Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, Princess Di, Heather Mills, Christina Ricci, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Pete Doherty, Winona Ryder,Angelina Jolie, Lindsey Lohan, Courtney Love, and Amy Winehouse.
BPD is characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. There is a high rate of self-injury without suicide intent, as well as a significant rate of suicide attempts and completed suicide in severe cases.
BPD is thought to be caused by childhood trauma and a genetic predisposition. There is an amygdala-prefrontal disconnection in borderline personality disorder. The amygdala is the area of the brain that is understood to regulate intense emotions, especially fear and the prefrontal cortex controls impulsive behavior.
Someone who has lived many lives in one — tragic, gory, beautiful — Love, now 45, once wrote: “I was raped by the crowd, but I asked for it.” She was abandoned as a child and grew up in reform school; fame has become her security. The photographer has given up trying to direct her; she is doing her own thing and doing it well. She can’t have had much sleep, I know I haven’t — I didn’t leave her hotel room until 4am. And we saw all of Manhattan before I even got there.
What she was addicted to was OxyContin, which she says is better than heroin. Her love affair with it ended when the courts threatened to take her daughter away unless she went to rehab. Since then, she has rediscovered Buddhism, reclaimed all the friends who care about her, been compulsive with her music and redirected her neurosis into songs. So when she talks about being saved (as she often does), does she mean financially, physically or psychologically? “Nobody has ever loaned me money. I mean, I was going to die on a few occasions. Johnny Depp gave me CPR on one. That’s as close as I ever got. I was watching that movie where he plays Dillinger, and I was like ‘Motherf***er, I never had myself any JD except CPR.’”
We go back to her hotel room, which is filled with vintage clothes and textiles, magazines, flowers, shoes. In one corner, there is a Buddhist altar, in another a blender. “I was on a juice trip to put on calories. I have lived on cookies and superfood.” She says she is supposed to have protein shakes to gain weight. “I got so skinny. I was 102lb. I got neurotic about eating. That’s not right for a 5ft 10in person. I do not have dysmorphia, but I think I experienced it a bit as I got bigger.” What does she weigh now? “I think it’s 125.” She jumps on the scales. “It’s 130. Awesome.”
We gossip about who is gay and who is not, about who she has had sex with and who she has not. Not Brand, apparently. “I don’t do younger. It’s not my thing.” The last time we met, three years ago, she was just getting over “a thing” with Steve Coogan. “It was not a love affair. There was a lot of pain to it. It was humiliating.” It was part of her penchant for chasing people who she knew would abandon her, because abandonment is what she knows. And if they didn’t abandon her, like Ed Norton, she would abandon them. My take on Coogan is that she wanted to save him because she didn’t know how to save herself.
The crazy life of Courtney Love
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