I don’t watch films about addiction. When I first got clean and sober almost nine years ago, I soaked in any piece of content I could find on drugs, drug use and recovery. At the time it was just YouTube clips of Russell Brand and the occasional memoir of a starlet who turned to cocaine before discovering yoga. After going to a 10:30am showing of Amy Winehouse documentary film Amy and bawling through the entire film, I decided to call it quits. I don’t need to see horrific stories of desperation – I’ve lived one. I am not a casual observer of addiction narratives; I’ve got skin in the game.
In 2018 I went to see A Star Is Born thinking I was watching a rags-to-riches tale of an unlikely popstar. I quickly realised we weren’t there to witness the female protagonist’s ascent, so much as the male protagonist’s decent. I got back in my car and had to wait a quarter of an hour for the fit of hysterical tears to pass before I drove home. I had the same realisation watching A Good Person.
Going in I knew that I had signed up to a film with Morgan Freeman and Florence Pugh. I knew that Pugh’s character Allison “had it all” before a “dramatic accident changed everything”. The ground here sounded so well-trodden that I thought I may need my wellies to navigate it. I knew that there was some element of addiction, but I envisaged a reasonably light touch depiction of a few too many nights on the sauce.
I knew I was wrong when, about half an hour in, Allison lay on the cold bathroom floor to soothe her withdrawal from prescription opioids. She was sweating, shaking and breathless and from then on, it all felt distressingly familiar. The trajectory of her decline was too quick, too obvious, too accurate. As Allison bargained, manipulated and begged for drugs, I saw myself. As Allison looked directly into the mirror and said: ‘I hate you’ to her own glazed reflection, I saw myself. As Allison was dragged out of a stranger’s house party unable to stand up straight, I saw myself.
The hopelessness, the false starts, empty promises and rare moments of lucidity rang so true, that I would find it hard to believe writer Zach Braff hadn’t experienced his own similar hardship. Either that or the recovering addicts they hired to consult on the project deserve a bonus of investment banker proportions.
When Allison eventually reached out for help and asked a woman to sponsor her, the loving directness that came back was reminiscent of those I was given by my first sponsor. It was virtually word for word what I remember being told when I, nine days sober, made the same terrifying request. The experienced mentor told her: “Some beat it, some die.” And she’s right.
Any of my friends who went to an in-patient treatment centre were told to look around because in five years a decent number of their cohort would be dead. And they were always right. Some people give up and let the tide of addiction pull them under. They feel exactly as Allison did when she told Daniel (played by Morgan Freeman): “I’m not sure I have the will.” And when she confessed in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that: “Without [the pills] I want to die.”
In the 2015 film Amy, the one that convinced me to stick to rom-coms, there’s a scene that stuck with me. Amy had been invited to perform at the Grammy’s but was denied a visa because of her well-documented drug use. It was arranged for her to live perform in London and it would be broadcast on big screens at the event. When the date came around she was in a stint of sobriety. She performed beautifully and won five Grammys. One of her friends burst into her dressing room to celebrate the momentous achievement but all Amy said was that it wasn’t as good without the drugs.
