Canada Drug Rehab

By Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC
Program Director, Sunshine Coast Health Center

Movies provide good lessons on what it means to be an addict and what it means to recover. Thoughtful movies, that is, not the sanitized and simplistic versions of recovery promoted in, for example, 28 Days with Sandra Bullock. This month on the alumni online program we’ll look at four thoughtful movies: Leaving Las Vegas, Under the Volcano, Hurlyburly, and Barfly.

These four movies don’t bother with superficial aspects of addiction or recovery. None of these movies is interested in what ‘triggers’ the addicted character’s cravings or their ‘maladaptive coping skills’. None of these movies labels addiction as a ‘disease’ or some sort of escape from life.

Rather, they provide us with a deep psychological understanding of what it means to be addicted. Like so many thoughtful works on addiction, they see the addict at a human level. The main characters are simply individuals who are struggling to make sense of their lives.

If you were at Sunshine Coast Health Center (”Sunshine Coast”) under our new therapy, you heard about the great psychologist, Viktor Frankl. These movies confirm Frankl’s explanation of addiction: “[A]lcoholism…is not understandable unless we understand the existential vacuum underlying [it].” The term, “existential vacuum,” means that a person struggles to find any satisfying meaning or purpose in life. Because of this, life seems boring and dull.

If you were at Sunshine Coast under the old therapy, the 12-step program agrees with Frankl’s idea. Narcotics Anonymous’ version is that the addict’s life is “meaningless, monotonous and boring.” Alcoholics Anonymous calls this feeling the “God-shaped hole” in life. Bill Wilson believed, of course, that this existential vacuum was why alcoholics drank, though he didn’t use Frankl’s term. The alcoholic was trying to fill the vacuum with booze. Remember that Bill W. said at the Shrine Auditorium in LA in 1943 that the alcoholic is the fellow “who is ‘trying to get his religion out of a bottle’, when what he really wants is unity within himself, unity with God….”

So many people in early recovery do not really appreciate how profound this idea is. They truly believe that if they quit the drug and get over their anger, depression, or whatever, then they will lead the good life. And they seem very surprised when they realize that this plan isn’t working too well for them.

But Bill W. and Frankl would not be surprised. They understood addiction at a human level. So, we’ll examine our movies and see if we can find in them any nuggets to help you fill that ‘God-shaped hole’ or that existential vacuum. 

Movie One—Leaving Las Vegas

Nicholas Cage (as Ben) and Elizabeth Shue (as Sera) do a wonderful job bringing to life John O’Brien’s novel, Leaving Las Vegas. This movie won 17 major awards and was nominated for 25 others. It’s a sad movie, but not depressing. And the great thing is that it doesn’t have all those stereotypical comments and scenes that we find in the sappy Hollywood versions of addiction.

As a sideline note, the late film critic, Roger Ebert, wrote his review of the movie on November 10, 1995, and said: “The practical details are not quite realistic—it would be hard to drink as much as Ben drinks and remain conscious….” Ha! Ebert obviously didn’t hang out with alcoholics.

One very interesting point about Leaving Las Vegas is that we really know nothing about the main characters. We don’t know about Ben’s ‘issues’; we don’t know why he’s drinking. All we know is that he is drinking himself to death. When this is pointed out to Ben, he turns it around, saying that his dying allows him to drink.

Ben knows exactly what he is doing. The movie is a plea for us to care for each other. It is a love story, and Ben and Sera care for each other even if the rest of society dismisses them. Ben knows that he could find happiness with Sera. But something makes him take another drink. This isn’t because he has a ‘disease’ or poor coping skills. Ben is struggling to find some sort of answer to suffering.

Ben’s real problem seems to be that he isn’t willing to fight for himself. Frankl said that happiness demands the “defiant human spirit,” the willingness to fight for your life. Ben recognizes his own suffering, he recognizes that most people live superficial lives, he recognizes that what advertisers call the ‘good life’ is all nonsense. But he is unwilling to take a heroic stand. Instead, he clings to his belief that only through drunkenness can he be free to be himself.

You should know that O’Brien committed suicide two weeks after signing the rights to make his book into a movie. His father said Leaving Las Vegas was his suicide note.

Movie Two — Under the Volcano

This movie with Albert Finney is based on Malcolm Lowry’s famous novel, Under the Volcano. There’s a BC link to the story. Lowry wrote the novel in Deep Cove, where he sobered up. And, interestingly, Nicholas Cage said that he studied this film as a role model for his character, Ben, in the movie Leaving Las Vegas.

Under the Volcano is one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consular officer in Mexico. We spend the day with him as he tries desperately to stay drunk, despite pleas from his doctor, friends, brother, and wife. 

The setting is the Festival of the Dead, which foreshadows Firmin’s fate as well as his life. He’s not very happy. He has lost his wife to the booze, his brother thinks he is crazy, and his doctor repeatedly warns him that an alcoholic death is not far off. Firmin struggles desperately to figure out a future where he can find peace of mind.

The year is 1939, when the world was plunging toward world war. The Western world seemed to have gone insane—another world war, one generation away from ‘the war to end all wars’. Safe in the obscurity of a small town in the south of Mexico, Firmin has tried to run away from the craziness only to find that he, too, is no better off.

Movie Three — Hurlyburly

Originally a famous play by David Rabe, Hurlyburly brings together several small players in the Hollywood film business in 1980s (the film version was updated to the 1990s). All the characters exist in an ‘existential vacuum’—there is a ‘God-shaped hole’ in their lives.

Eddie is the main character. He’s a drug fiend and is soon to hit bottom. The other male characters are in little better shape. There aren’t any real connections between the characters, which they openly admit. And women are useful mainly as sex objects and as presents to give to other male friends.

Eddie talks a lot, desperate to find some meaning in his empty life. A typical example is this dialogue between Eddie and Mickey:

Mickey (Kevin Spacey): You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t.
Eddie (Sean Penn): I do.
Mickey: No. I know you think you know what you’re saying, but you’re not saying it.
Eddie: No, I know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I mean, but I know what I’m saying. Is that what you mean?
Mickey: Yeah.
Eddie: Right. But it’s not like anybody knows what anything means, right? It’s not like anybody knows that. So at least I know I don’t know what I mean, which is better than most people. They probably think they know what they mean, not just what they think they mean.

This little exchange highlights Eddie’s dilemma of trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life. People only think they have meaningful lives, according to Eddie, but they’re just fooling themselves.

In the film, drugs (and sex) are distractions from coming to terms with his “meaningless, monotonous and boring” life, as Narcotics Anonymous would judge Eddie’s existence.

Movie Four — Barfly

Barfly is a novel written by the addict-writer Charles Bukowski. He based it more or less on his own life. Bukowski became famous writing lots of poetry and short stories and novels about the addicted ‘down-and-outers’. The film version of Barfly (with Mickey Rourke) has become a cult classic about the American subculture.

The central setting of the film is a bar, where Henry (Rourke) is at home, drunk as usual and getting into fights as usual, particularly with the bartender. But Henry also has a talent for writing poetry. A healthy-minded socialite appreciates his literary genius and convinces him to sober up and get serious about his writing. He agrees, and she organizes his life for him, including providing him with a place to stay and making sure he is introduced to the movers and shakers in the artistic world.

But Henry soon realizes that he has given up control of his life to her. Eventually, he returns to the bar and his old lifestyle.

A typical healthy-minded person would likely be perplexed why an addict would choose to be an addict, especially after tasting the ‘good’ life. Henry has a new wardrobe, is well fed, is making new healthy friends. So why return to drunkenness and fighting the bartender?

The problem for Henry is that, clean and sober in his new clothes and going to formal parties, he realizes that he has lost control of his own life. If a person is to be happy, says the movie, he must feel in charge of his life. For Henry, the only place where this is possible is in the bar, drunk and fighting. 

Obviously, coming to some place like Sunshine Coast is not even in Henry’s mind. But if he did come to Sunshine Coast, he would hear us tell him: “You are the author of your life.” That would make sense to Henry.

Tags: 28 Days, Albert Finney, Barfly, Bill Wilson, Charles Bukowski, David Rabe, Hurlyburly, John O'Brien, Kevin Spacey, Leaving Las Vegas, Malcolm Lowry, Mickey Rourke, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, Under the Volcano, Viktor Frankl

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Addiction Recovery (Life After Treatment), Books on Addiction, Exploring Addiction, Geoff Thompson, Movies on Addiction, On Line Support - Alumni, Treatment Philosophy, alcohol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.