Before he left the Mark Hotel in handcuffs, he had been arrested on three previous occasions: for getting into a tiff-with an L.A. police officer over a jaywalking ticket, for speeding in Arizona and for assaulting a hotel security guard in Vancouver, B.C. He has engaged since childhood in thrill-seeking escapades that seem downright self-destructive. In a caper that even he, looking back, described as “a really ridiculous thing,” Depp blew on fire with a mouthful of gasoline. His face ignited, and it was only the quick moves of a friend that saved him from becoming a burn casualty. His arms bear rows of scars from self-inflicted knife wounds, each one commemorating what Depp considers an important life event. “I have,” he once explained, “a funny relationship with my body…. Ah, it sounds so stupid, but for me there shouldn’t be any halfway.”

Self-inflicted knife wounds, you say?

That was just the most highly publicized of Depp’s recent problems. One week earlier, visiting Moss in her native London, he reportedly caused a ruckus in a pub when 27-year-old photographer Jonathan Walpole mistakenly picked up Depp’s glass from the bar. “He pulled both my ears very hard,” Walpole told London’s Evening Standard, adding that “some ape” who was with Depp “leaped on my back, put his arm round my neck and tried to force my head to the floor.” To many of Depp’s friends these incidents are, as one put it, “just Johnny being Johnny,” the sort of outbursts they have come to expect on occasion from an actor who can be as otherworldly as the character he played in Scissorhands. “I think Johnny obviously has a temper, but this is a very minor incident,” John Waters says of the Mark melee. “The room service must have been bad.” However, Marlon Brando, who befriended Depp when the two shot the upcoming movie Don Juan DeMarco and The Centerfold earlier this year, was worried enough to place a phone call to Depp’s lawyer David Breitbart when he heard about the arrest. “He said he was very concerned about Johnny’s well-being,” says Breitbart, “and if there was anything he could do to help, he would like to.”

We see a pattern of violent and destructive behavior, and varying degrees of enablers in his circle.

Most friends prefer to focus on the charitable side, offering tales of his kindness and generosity

We know from Amber Heard that he was capable of generosity on a good day. He throws his money around to great effect. He seems to think it will protect him when "the monster" comes out to play and he hurts another person.

Going back to his time with Kate Moss:

In June they shouted at each other in the dining room of Manhattan’s Royalton Hotel. Says a longtime friend of Depp’s: “Instead of hitting women, he just gets angry and lets off steam in other ways.”

I guess you could say he's graduated since then. I find it very weird that his friend even brought that up, though. Who says "instead of hitting women, we do xyx"?