I recently watched the Hula series “Dopesick” which has received 3 Golden Globe awards. I did not know about this series until I chanced upon a video clip of Michael Keaton accepting his golden globe award for his brilliant portrayal of a doctor who becomes addicted in the series, Dopesick. He breaks down in his acceptance speech as he reveals his family suffered a tragedy with the sad death of his nephew. His nephew was addicted to opiods. Being the curious person that I am I found “Dopesick” and I was hooked.
“Dopesick” is about the opiod crisis in the USA but pivots around the Sackler family of Purdue Pharmaceuticals who purposefully developed oxycontin knowing of its addictive qualities. The family has been described as one of the evilest families in the USA as oxycontin started this huge epidemic which sadly has to date resulted in the death of approximately half a million Americans.
I was so moved by the final monologue and continue to be moved every time I watch it, you can watch it here:
I have called this piece “Growing Pains of Addiction” as Michael Keaton so aptly says
“Just part of being human being and sometimes good can come out of it, if we’re brave enough and willing to go a little deeper work our way through it. Try to overcome it. Well, we just might find our better selves.”
Opioids might not be everybody’s problem, but, as Keaton’s speech suggests, pain is. If we don’t go toward what hurts us, examine it, looking at it, and take the risk to suffer from it, we’re just taking a different way out. And that struggle is the same for all of us whether we are addicts, alcohols, in recovery, family and friends of loved ones who are battling the disease of addiction.
The deeper message is that we all know pain, we all have experienced pain whether we are addicted or not. Physical pain, mental health painful challenges, emotional pain. For me this poignant speech is such a very good life lesson.
The hallmark of recovery in whatever form and shape that takes (whether as an addict, recovery from retrenchment, the dissolution of a marriage, recovering from an abusive relationship, recovery from stress and the challenge of living life on life’s terms) is that you cannot numb your pain. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much an alcoholic drinks, or how much an addict uses or in my case, no matter how much I eat (because I eat my emotions and stress), you cannot numb your pain.
You cannot numb your trauma, you cannot numb your anger, anxiety, depression, resentment, grief. You cannot numb feeling unloved, not worthy, feeling invisible and unwanted.
We have to feel the pain. The struggle is the same for all of us.
We have to walk through it and process it so we may emerge on the other side. Numbing the pain makes it worse as we have experienced with our addicts and alcoholics. Addicts and alcoholics need to use more and more or drink more and more to numb the pain – what initially was one hit, snort, drag to numb whatever pain they are experiencing, snowballs and is insufficient to numbing the pain, the euphoric release initially experienced was temporary and as the addiction grows, the euphoric release becomes more and more elusive.
We can grow through the pain working towards finding our better selves.
My son, Tristan, thankfully is doing so well on his recovery journey, daily working his 12 steps and becoming confident, which he never was before, self-assured, again he always battled with self-esteem, reading at his meetings (reading was always a challenge for him and he would never ever read to me in his teens let alone in public and watching him read so beautifully at the rally in December 2020 made me feel all warm and fuzzy as he embraced the fear and pain and emerged a winner); facing the pain of learning and studying challenges as he is studying – it is almost as if addiction was such a good thing for him to go through as he has and still is metamorphosing into a better version than he was before addiction.
Flippantly we can say “no pain no gain” and “what does not kill you makes you stronger” but there is actually truth in those cliched sayings.
This is from Al-Anon’s Courage to Change :
"Sometimes the greatest growth comes through pain, but it’s not the pain that helps me grow, it’s my response to it. Will I suffer through the experience and continue as before or let the pain inspire changes that help me grow? The choice is mine."
“I had learned in Al-Anon to look for opportunities for growth in every situation. This attitude allowed me to gain many spiritual riches from the pain I was experiencing.”
And to end I found this quote from Fran Drescher who used to be the nanny in the sitcom of the same name:
