Tag Archives: addictions rehab

Mar 28

“28 Days”: Hollywood Version of Addictions Rehab

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Due to the high costs, whether you have health insurance or not, month-long treatment of addictions is not in the cards for most people. Less expensive treatment options are generally now the norm. But we’ll always have, as a dramedy-type reminder, the movie 28 Days (2000). In this film, Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock), a writer for a city newspaper, messes up her life to such a degree that she’s forced into a rehab facility known as Serenity Glen. It’s that or jail.

Here’s the trailer:

If you didn’t already pick up on it, rehab-speak runs rampant in 28 Days. Charles Taylor, Salon: “It’s one of those movies that make you feel like you’re going through a therapy session.”

Gwen herself says while in rehab: “I am so tired by the way you people talk. You know, I mean, ‘one day at a time.’ What is that? I mean, like two, three days at a time is an option?”

Some of the best quickie lines come from Betty, the tough nurse played by Margo Martindale, when she announces over the PA system the upcoming educational topics. These often start with “Tonight’s lecture…”:

  • How many brain cells did I kill last night?
  • Are you a blackout drunk, or don’t you remember?
  • I’ve worked all 12 steps, can I go home now?
  • What’s wrong with celebrating sobriety by getting drunk?
  • Is God an alcoholic?

The following is a more serious scene involving a group meeting that occurs after Gwen uses again:

It’s not uncommon for substance abuse counselors to be in recovery themselves, and this movie reflects this. At one point, top counselor Cornell Shaw (Steve Buscemi) tells a group of patients what it was like for him to be in the grip of chemical addiction:

…I would tell myself, ‘Tonight, I will not get wasted.’ And then something would happen. Or nothing would happen. And, uh, I’d get that feeling. I think you all know what that feeling is. When your skin is screaming and your hands are shaking. Uh, and your stomach feels like it wants to jump through your throat. And you know, that if anyone had a clue how wrong it felt to be sober, they wouldn’t dream of asking you to stay that way. They would say, ‘Oh, geeze, I didn’t know. Here. It’s okay for you. Do that mound of cocaine. Have a drink. Have 20 drinks. Whatever you need to do to feel like a normal human being, you do it.’ And boy, I did it. I drank and I snorted, and I drank and I snorted, and drank and I snorted, and I did this day after day after day after night after night. And I didn’t care about the consequences, because I knew they couldn’t be half as bad as not using. And then one night, something happened. I woke up. I woke up on a sidewalk. And I had no idea where I was. I couldn’t have told you the city I was in. And my head was pounding, and I looked down and my shirt is covered in blood. And as I’m lying there, wondering what happens next, I head a voice, and it said, ‘Man, this is not a way to live. This is a way to die.’

Although it’s been many years since I saw this film, I do remember kind of enjoying it despite its flaws. And, judging by a lot of consumer reviews online, so did many others.

Mar 27

“Postcards from the Edge”: An Addict Always Has Enablers

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Postcards From the Edge, a 1990 comedy adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Carrie Fisher, features Meryl Streep as Suzanne, an actress struggling with drug abuse. We can only imagine Suzanne’s pre-rehab experiences with her presumed enablers, as the movie deals more with post-rehab.

But the movie does start us out with a bit of rehab—which Suzanne has more than earned. One of Suzanne’s best and most-quoted lines: “Instant gratification takes too long.”

Vincent Canby, reviewer for the New York Times, notes about Suzanne’s treatment:

Suzanne doesn’t minimize her predicament, but she can’t help standing a bit outside it. When a therapist suggests that a group encounter session be ended so the patients can visit with their ‘significant others,’ Suzanne wants to know why everyone has to talk in bumper stickers.

When she’s discharged and finds out that she has to live with her mom Doris (Shirley MacLaine) in order to keep her current film-acting job, she’s deeply chagrined. Much of the ensuing plot is about the strained mother-daughter relationship, in fact.

Doris drinks problematically, although she denies being an alcoholic: “I just drink like an Irish person.” A well-known entertainer herself, Doris is also self-absorbed, controlling, and overshadowing of her daughter.

Postcards From the Edge offers glimpses of some common intergenerational family dynamics of an addict. We find out, for example, that Doris started giving Suzanne over-the-counter sleeping pills regularly when she was only nine years old—a great way to set up eventual addiction issues in one’s offspring. And when we meet “Grandma,” Doris’s mom, it becomes pretty clear how Doris became the parent she is.

The review from Variety concludes that this movie “(p)acks a fair amount of emotional wallop in its dark-hued comic take on a chemically dependent Hollywood mother and daughter.” If you want more depth, however, you might actually prefer the novel. It’s a quick, witty read that gives us additional info about Suzanne’s rehab and therapy.

Roger Ebert agrees in wishing the film had gone deeper on the issue of addiction recovery. “Half the people in Hollywood seem to have gone through recovery from drugs and alcohol by now. And yet no one seems able to make a movie that’s really about the subject. Do they think it wouldn’t be interesting? Any movie that cares deeply about itself – even a comedy – is interesting. It’s the movies that lack the courage of their convictions, the ones that keep asking themselves what the audience wants, that go astray.”