THE STORIES began appearing in the papers a few weeks ago. Something’s happening out there. What it is, isn’t exactly clear. Those on the streets, and those who patrol the streets, were warning about the heroin in circulation. Or a new blend of it.

In early January of this year, newspapers nationwide carried the story after Vermont’s governor devoted his entire State of the State speech to what he called the “full-blown heroin crisis” in the Green Mountain State. The health commissioner of Vermont called it an epidemic.

From there, the bad news began to spread. Like a blood stain on a carpet.

Officials in Maryland say dozens have been killed over the last few months by a mixture of heroin and a drug called Fentanyl. In a two-week period in western Pennsylvania, more than 20 people were found dead from overdoses.

Lab techs in Pittsburgh noted something strange about the heroin found on the victims: It was yellow instead of white. (It’s known on the street as Theraflu or Bud Ice. Keep your ears open when the kids talk.)

Posters began going up in Maine: “Please Do Not Use Alone. Do a Tester Shot.”

One cop in Portland told the New York Times: “We’ve got overdose deaths in the bathrooms of fast-food restaurants. This is an increase like we haven’t seen in years.”

Dealers were telling people to be careful.

CBS News reports that this new blended drug has caused deaths as far south as Louisiana. Which means it could be here in Arkansas. Probably is, somewhere.

As with some other drugs, users can develop a tolerance for heroin, meaning they’ll need more and more of it to get the same high. Those in the know say you can’t know what concentration you’re getting on the street day to day, week to week, dealer to dealer. What’ll you have today, fella-x or y? And which is the unknown quantity or quality that’ll kill you?

IT’S SUCH a familiar story. Think back to March 5, 1982, the day the news spread: John Belushi was dead.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. John Belushi had everything going for him. He wasn’t only an actor-he had a rockin’ band. And he fronted it. The Rolling Stones wanted to hang out with The Blues Brothers. He was Joliet Jake, for crying out loud. He had Continental Divide. He had it. Then he was gone.Carried away by his demon drugs.

It’s a succession of sensations Americans have come to know all too well in these sad cases: Shock, then grief, then the details nobody really wants to know. A detail like the needle found in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s arm when his friends discovered his body over the weekend. But maybe we should know the details. So when the kids see the next Hunger Games, we’ll be sure we know what we’re talking about when we have to tell them that, no, Philip Seymour Hoffman won’t be making another movie. And why. Not another Doubt. Not another Charlie Wilson’s War. Not another Capote.

IN ALL the reams of details and filmography, just what we have lost may get lost itself. How could this Philip Seymour Hoffman get inside so many mysterious, ominous, soul-destroying characters? His range was as wide as the Pacific Ocean’s. How could he fathom all those types, yet leave them unfathomable? That may be his lasting legacy as an actor. He didn’t just capture the outrageous but the timid, able to play one role with wild flamboyance, another with restraint-even a restrained restraint.

How did Philip Seymour Hoffman do it? Our theory is that he explored the evils of our nature because he himself was so . . . decent. For he was one of the few actors who, once off-stage or off-camera, made quiet, unassuming sense whenever he was interviewed. He didn’t sound like a fool actor far beyond his depth. Maybe because he was one contemporary celebrity we can’t ever remember talking politics.

Just where the artificial line between being an actor and a character actor is drawn has never been clear. But if there is such a distinction, Philip Seymour Hoffman mastered both callings. Maybe because he not only had talent but studied, studied, studied-not just the lines he spoke or the characters he played or the book or script from which the character and story were drawn, but some inner essence he found there.

Someone once described genius as the capacity for taking infinite pains. Maybe that was the secret, or one of them, of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s genius.

In his own way, this singular actor and artist of his generation confirmed Plato’s theory that acting isn’t an art at all, but a kind of divine fit-a visitation of the gods that transforms the actor. And transfixes the audience, even now, in grateful memory.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 02/05/2014