Letters to the Editor
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Touching and gripping
I'm one of the people who can't watch that show. But thank you for channeling its impact in your brave and sensitive piece.
Speaking of Alzheimer's, FYI:
http://www.norml.org//index.cfm?Group_ID=7003
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beautiful piece
I'm so sorry about your mother.
I don't know why other people's misery helps to cope with your own, but it does, doesn't it? The day a close friend of mine died, I found myself 24 hours later still awake, reading every single story on a site dedicated to murdered children, sobbing my eyes out. On one level I was terribly embarrassed to be crying at bad poetry and pastel pictures of Victorian angels, but on another level... I don't know how to explain it. But it helped.
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I've watched every episode
Why? I'm the daughter of an alcoholic. All these stories from the Intervention kids...I always assumed it was just my private hell. When we finally did an intervention last year (which didn't work, she refused), I watched an episode that made me cry, and NOTHING makes me cry (another skill learned in my childhood)...a boomer woman, drinking herself to death, was intervened by her kids. Hers took. Good for them.
It's not exploitative. I grew up thinking addiction was a shame and a secret. You know what? It's way more f**king prevalent than you think. The more we shout stories from the rooftops, addicts can't hide, and families can't hide them either.
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The Blues
A touching article Mr. Hannaham.
Allie wrote, "I don't know why other people's misery helps to cope with your own, but it does, doesn't it?"
I think the reason that Mr. Hannaham finds a comfort in watching "Intervention" is akin to the impulse of blues music.
The blues, as a musical form, taps into deep emotional impulses. The history of the blues, of course, is rooted in the slave experience (the music and forms a continuation of the West African Griot's role in society). In a metaphorical sense we are all slaves to our humanity; to our inherent human weaknesses, and to our inevitable physical decline. But it is in the simple emotional power of the blues where we connect ourselves to others and where our only hope of redemption lies.
Our human weakness and fragility is the great leveler. Through the blues we are able to give release to the deep existential angst of our imperfect and lonely condition by aligning ourselves with others. We take comfort not in others' misfortune, but in the shared experience of pain and loss. We cope by standing together, by crying and laughing and singing with others. We listen to each other's stories, and want desperately to have other's listen to our stories as well. The beauty and horror of the human race.
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Life is Fragile at All Times
The terrible beauty of Intervention is that it emphasizes how vulnerable we all are -- as family members and as individuals. We watch addicts disappear, just as people with Alzheimer's slip away while we watch.
So many of the addicts on Intervention can cite a moment in childhood where things went wrong and the people around them failed to see the damage that was being done. The pictures of the addicts from around that time show that the light and joy has gone out of these kids' eyes.
The human spirit must be protected, nurtured and cherished -- when it disappears, all that remains is a shell.
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One of The Greatest Shows On Television
I too am addicted to that show. I am an adult now but my parents were both decent and loving and flawed serious drug addicts. I don't think that you have to have a background like that to appreciate the genius of the show, but it definitely helps.
The show is comforting in its familiarity now. Virtually all of the episodes have a consistent rhythm to their editing. The show shifts gears to throughout the hour in a way that is consistent and engrossing. The introduction. The early build-up where the depth of the addiction is laid out in somewhat of an overview that will later be reinforced with painful and tear duct numbing footage. The sudden shift in tone and music as the early childhood photos flash in a painful but moving montage that gives way to photos of ostensibly happier days in the addicts adulthood before the real crash began. That "visual flashback" of sorts is one of the really compelling and moving aspects of the show. In the tsunami of reality shows that have hit the shore in the lasts ten years or so, this one somehow finds a way to stand out.
Thanks for the article on it and hopefully you spreading the word will lead to more viewers and more episodes (that is the only problem--the seasons are disappointingly short).
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A Double Edged Sword
Intervention is compelling television, that cannot be denied. It candidly reveals the crippling effects of addiction on average people and is perhaps helping convince many that addiction is a disease. Despite the potential good being done by the show, it also serves as a painful reminder of the inadequacies of America's for profit health care system. How many of these families would agree to participate in this voyeruistic show if they could afford to put their addicted loved ones into quality rehab facilities, like the ones paid for by the show's producers? These folks are nothing like the participants on "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew", who can afford to pay for addiction treatment and, inexplicably, still opt to do so on television. They turn to Intervention because they have nowhere else to turn. At this rate the show must be due a sequel, this on focusing on people struggling with mental illness: Committed. America is turning into another Ancient Rome, I fear, where the poor and unfortunate are forced to serve as entertainment in order to survive.
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keeps it green
I watch it because I can identify with both addict (especially the alkies) and with family members, having seen and beaten addiction from both sides. And the pain is cathartic to me, too. I cry when I see the addict's despair, because I know exactly what that's like. And I cry when I see the family's pain -- I'm not the only alky in my family. I'm just one of the lucky ones.
These people have a chance -- the families can get their sisters and daughters and fathers back if they get treatment. But I'll never get my mother back, no matter what.
My mother's personality has changed -- her wit is gone, her edgy brilliance, her competitiveness, her curiosity. She was once warm and interested. Now she flat and indifferent. She's lost to me forever because she has frontotemporal dementia and there's nothing anyone can do about it. She can't do some brain exercises and get better or use marijuana and be able to express love again. The jackass in the White House set stem cell research back years, so there's no hope on that front. The brain cells are just gone, and going still.
FTD is a horror show (I've linked info about it to my signature). You watch someone change into someone else, someone you have a hard time loving even though you've loved her all your life, and you watch her slowly die, and there's nothing you can do about it. You obsess about it and learn the meaning of medical terms your own family doctor doesn't even know and spend nights poring through medical abstracts looking for hope -- especially if it runs in the family, like it does in mine.
So I cry over the addicts and families in Intervention and my husband understands why and doesn't tease me about it and seeing the ones who succeed makes me rejoice because, for them, there's hope and it's not too late.
And it keeps it all green for me, in case I ever think about escaping from the pain of my mother's slow death via vodka or pills, and it reminds me how useless I would be for my family now if I hadn't been sober for sixteen years.