If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!
I have been watching a ton of TV and movies in my free time the past year or so, and it’s been remarkable how much addiction and recovery end up being plot lines these days. In fact, I can’t remember the last show that ran for any length of time where drugs and alcohol were NOT a part of the show.
So with that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Sober Review. I’m going to take TV shows and movies in which addiction and/or recovery are a central part of the show, and I’ll review them. I’ll give you an overall grade and opinion on what I thought of the show, but I will also assess the way the show treats addicts and alcoholics. I’ve certainly seen my fair share of ridiculous portrayals, that’s for sure.
For my first Sober Review, I decided to watch the first season of the HBO show Euphoria. It’s now four or five episodes into Season 2. The two biggest stars in the show are probably Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney, though you might recognize Eric Dane, too (he was a doctor on Grey’s Anatomy). The show is very complex and nuanced, but the plot description is pretty simple: It’s young adults, mostly high school students, doing what young adults do—they have messy experiments with drugs, alcohol, sex, love and identity. Almost every one of the kid’s is flailing around, trying to figure out who they are, and many of them use drugs and alcohol to help them figure that out. I have no experience whatsoever with that, RIGHT?!?!
I will try to do a spoiler-free review in case you want to give the show a try.
ADDICTION
All right, let me start with the way that drugs and alcohol are represented on the show. They are represented A LOT. Like, I don’t know that I have ever seen more partying in a tv show or movie than exists in Euphoria. In fact, if you struggle with addiction yourself, I gotta say, you might want to avoid this show because I could see it being quite triggering. The entire show revolves around drugs and alcohol and wild party scenes. I’d proceed with caution for all those addicts out there.
But as far as accuracy, I recognized a lot of the mayhem. Overdoing it, fighting, lashing out with words, breaking up with one person and hooking up with another, terrible day-after hangovers, lying to parents… oof, it’s too accurate, and it’s obvious that people with experience themselves play a huge part in putting this show together.
I will say this to all of the sober parents out there: As a father to several teenagers, I found the show to be scary but illuminating in understanding my kids and what they face every day, what people probably text them, what temptations are out there. I bet lots of you fellow addict and alcoholic parents will see it that way. But… I bet lots of sober people with kids will find this flat-out horrifying and cover their eyes. So think about how much you want to actually know before you fire up Euphoria.
RECOVERY
OK, now let’s talk about recovery. There is a ton of sobriety and recovery in this show, too. There is a diner scene in one of the later episodes in Season 1 where a struggling addict kid sits down with a guy who has a long time sober working in a 12-step program. They talk addiction. They talk recovery. They talk sponsorship. They talk amends. They talk higher powers. I’ve never seen anything that thorough about recovery, and I found myself nodding along for most of it.
Two parts about this scene did make me raise my eyebrows, though. First, it’s a 50-year-old dude sponsoring a 17- or 18-year-old high school girl. I think most sober people that I know would frown upon that dynamic. Euphoria portrays it in a powerful, non-sexual, seemingly-healthy way, and again, I found the scene very moving and authentic. But if a man I knew asked me if he could sponsor a high school girl in early sobriety, I think I would tell him that is not a great idea.
The second part is their conversation about finding a higher power. The sponsee raises all the questions that so many of us have about religion versus spirituality, about higher power versus God, about poking and prodding about “Maybe I can stay sober without the higher power thing.” I thought the sober dude was a little too dismissive of what the character suggested she could use as a higher power (for example, she said she thinks there are powers greater than her, like the ocean, and she asks if she could use the ocean as her higher power. He says no way).
All in all, I think the recovery aspect of this is about as deep as I’ve seen on screen.
OVERALL GRADE
I’m giving Euphoria an 87 percent on my grading scale, which, again, factors in accuracy of portrayal of addiction and sobriety as much as “Is this show good?” This show is good. I already explained why I really like it—I think it is a B+ level show.
Now let me explain why I deducted a few points.
The biggest negative for me watching the show is how unsettling it can be to watch a show that is this graphic, mostly revolving around young women’s lives, when they show the first few credits at the end—Sam Levinson is the creator, the director and the executive producer. I found it a little uncomfortable to think of him writing and directing a bunch of these scenes.
Semi-related, this is an artsy show. There are flash forwards and flashbacks, and dream sequences, and unreliable narrators. I’d say 95 percent of the time, I found it brilliant. But in one or two scenes in every episode, I had a moment where I thought, “OK, you’re purposely trying to confuse the viewer here” or “Did we really need that 60-second slow-motion montage of every character with a bright light shining on their face?”
I took off a few points for how much the camera lingers on very difficult stuff—drugs, alcohol, sex, violence. There’s a certain queasiness already associated with watching young people live like this, but I felt like the director, Sam Levinson, took his time lingering on some of the tough stuff for a little too long. There’s a line where a show can go from illuminating to just trying to shock.
I also took off a point for the higher power conversation. I thought it was just slightly more narrow than my understanding of what a higher power can be, and I didn’t like it being on screen like that just in case anybody else out there watched it and decided that it reinforced their decision to not try recovery.
I also docked a few points because of a wild legal situation in Season 1 that has a preposterous resolution, where somebody else confesses to a crime other than the actual perpetrator, and witnesses come forward and confirm the lie. All of these people are very young, and speak to police with no attorneys and without telling their parents. It’s absurd, and I normally could live with some absurdity but this show nails so much else about life in a very real way. To have a complex legal situation resolved in five minutes by having everybody go down to the police station alone and make up a story… it felt like a big mis-step to me and out of place in such an authentic show.
So that’s what I thought of Euphoria. If you’re watching it and have thoughts, feel free to to comment here. Thanks for letting me share!
In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
“I was never a sloppy drinker. I was always very proper—I always made sure my drink was on the bar before I feel off the stool.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, April 2005, by Brian D. from Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.
