By Staff WriterOriginal Source: soberinfo.com“The Last Jedi” won’t be the final Star Wars film, but it will be the final film of Carrie Fisher’s career. With the release of “Star Wars” forty years ago, Carrie Fisher became a space princess, and introduced viewers to an alternate universe — an entire stellar landscape, sprawling across multiple planets populated by Droids, Ewoks, Wookies, and, most importantly, Jedi. In the world Fisher helped build, the Jedi are superhuman beings; able to bend the physical universe with the power of their mind, they exert their will on the world around them.In the world we actually inhabit, though, there are no Jedi; our individual wills are often subject to forces we neither control nor understand. This fact was born out by Fisher’s life. On screen, she was Princess Leia, the twin sister of Luke Skywalker, possessed of a regal bearing, an iron will, and (as we recently learned) her own Force-driven powers. In the real world, she was Carrie Fisher, a flawed and funny human being who battled mental illness and addiction for her entire adult life. That life came to an end on December 27, 2016.Whereas many celebrities fight tooth and nail to preserve the pristine picture of a perfect life, Fisher was never afraid to merely be herself, allowing fans (and critics) to see the actual human underneath the fame. As she wrote and spoke openly about a life spent battling her own frail humanity, Fisher was always willing to discuss her failures as openly as she spoke of her successes.Wry, sardonic, self-deprecating, and hilarious, Fisher advocated tirelessly for mental health and addiction issues. Codeine, Fisher’s drug of choice, was one way she dealt with the bipolar disorder she was diagnosed with at age 28. There were others; in fact, at her death, Fisher had a cocktail of drugs still in her system, including cocaine, ecstasy, and alcohol. While critics have pointed to this fact as evidence of Fisher’s failed rehab, those who understand addiction and mental illness (or face their own battles) see a different lesson:Addiction and mental illness do not simply go away; every fight lasts a lifetime.When news of Fisher’s toxicology report leaked, her daughter, Billie Lourd, reiterated this point: “My mom battled drug addiction and mental illness her entire life. She was purposefully open…about the social stigmas surrounding these diseases…She talked about the shame that torments people and their families confronted by these diseases, [and] she’d want her death to encourage people to be open about their struggles.”Almost exactly one year after she passed away, fans said farewell to Fisher this month, as the actress’s final performance in “The Last Jedi” has been widely hailed as one of her best.
