‘Euphoria’ is actually good for fighting substance abuse (unlike a certain “educational” program)
This post contains spoilers for the TV show Euphoria and touches on subjects that may be triggering to some readers
In one of the most surprising turns of 2022, I and many others have been horrified to discover that the oft-maligned D.A.R.E. program still exists. For their re-entrance into public consciousness on January 26th of this year, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program decided to publish a statement condemning the depiction of substance abuse on the popular HBO series Euphoria, saying the show “glorifies” drug use and other “destructive behaviors.”
Image from dare.org
Euphoria is a show primarily about drug use, following narcotic addict Rue Bennett (played by Zendaya) as she struggles through recovery and relapse during her senior year of high school. “It is unfortunate,” D.A.R.E.’s statement claims. “That HBO, social media, television program reviewers, and paid advertising have chosen to refer to the show as 'groundbreaking,' rather than recognizing the potential negative consequences on school age children.” The educational program said it would be willing to consult with Euphoria producers, presumably to suggest a new course of action for the series to take.
If you’re decently familiar with the history of D.A.R.E., you might question what authority they have to speak on substance abuse in the current decade. Rising to prominence in the 1990s, the program was, for a time, considered a leading voice in the movement to prevent adolescent drug use. At its peak popularity, D.A.R.E. was practiced in 75% of U.S. school districts. Three years after its inception, it began receiving federal funding, however lost it in 1998 following an investigation from the American Psychological Association. Along with other organizations, the APA reported that D.A.R.E. and its curriculum had no effect on drug usage for young people. One study found that in certain populations, the program may have even increased students’ likelihood to try drugs, citing a supposed “boomerang effect” that potentially informed more suburban youth of illicit substances than it convinced to abstain from them.
D.A.R.E. and other anti-drug programs aimed at kids failed for a lot of reasons. As an arm for America’s larger “War on Drugs,” the curriculum for D.A.R.E. attacked the issue of substance abuse as a crime and moral failing. Rather than having medical and mental health professionals lead its discussions on drugs and their potential dangers, police officers were made the program’s representatives, teaching hour-long classes once a week over the course of months that hyperbolically described the detrimental effects of illicit substances, propagated misinformation, and promoted a “zero-tolerance” policy toward drugs. “Just Say No” became an advertising campaign for the ‘80s and ‘90s anti-drug movement, championed by First Lady Nancy Reagan in the Reagan administration’s attempt to aggressively criminalize recreational drug use. The slogan and movement were about as effective as abstinence-only sex education–that is to say, not at all.
Today, D.A.R.E. is not only discredited, it’s widely mocked. Instead of exploring substance abuse as a symptom of mental health crises, the program depicted drugs and drug users with little reverence for nuance or accuracy, creating a culture against drug use that’s both unsympathetic and occasionally hilarious. As late as 2015, D.A.R.E.’s website re-posted an article calling marijuana “one of the most dangerous drugs on Earth,” which claimed edible marijuana candies killed nine people in Colorado and twelve at Coachella, before organization leaders realized the article was satire and deleted it. Anti-drug TV spots from the ‘80s through the early 2000s depicted drug and alcohol use so laughably–comparing “your brain on drugs” to a fried egg, and implying that smoking pot could make you hallucinate a talking dog–that by the end of the ‘90s, D.A.R.E. merchandise became ironically appropriated by actual drug users, remaining an inside joke of 90s-kids to this day.
In some ways, D.A.R.E. coming out against Euphoria is almost an unintentional endorsement given the organization’s reputation. Even before the January 26th statement, HBO’s hit show was already cultivating more acclaim amongst drug abuse experts than zero-tolerance education has in the 21st century. Overall consensus is as mixed as expert opinion can be, but many have praised Euphoria for its accurate and unflinching portrayal of addiction. Celebrity addiction specialist Dr. Drew said he’s a “huge fan” of the show and its depiction of substance abuse. The Recovery Village called Euphoria “the show that gets it right.” Banyan Treatment Centers voiced the same sentiment, specifically writing on their website, “the showrunners are careful not to glamorize drug use.”
The fact that Euphoria’s showrunner, Sam Levinson, has admitted to suffering from substance abuse as a teenager, becoming sober at 19-years-old, is a key element to the show’s success. The series’ protagonist and narrator, Rue, opens the first episode with displayed symptoms of multiple mental disorders. A doctor diagnoses her OCD, ADHD, and generalized anxiety disorder as a toddler while stating she may also be bipolar but “she’s a little young to tell.” By adolescence, Rue’s been prescribed different medications, all of which she flushes down the toilet to self-medicate with her mother’s Xanax instead. She becomes addicted to various substances in her teens, likely as a result of her pre-existing mental health struggles as well as the early death of her father. No matter the reason, Rue loves drugs. She’ll take pretty much anything in search of a euphoric numbness. All she wants is “those two seconds of nothingness” that follows her high, told to us with a close-up shot and shifting colored-lights across Zendaya’s face.
Drugs, as Rue portrays them, seem to offer users a peaceful distance from a loud, overwhelming world. Without narcotics, she’s forced to live within a brain afflicted with uncontrollable compulsions, anxiety, and constantly fluctuating moods. In the penultimate episode of season one, “The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Pee While Depressed,” after remaining sober for about three months, Rue endures an intense depressive episode that results in her being hospitalized for a kidney infection. The following episode, she’s left heartbroken when the girl she loves abandons her at a train station, after which she goes home and relapses.
Euphoria does what other shows about drugs often don’t because it understands the thing programs like D.A.R.E. refuse to explore: how people become addicts. In a “Just Say No” culture, there’s no room to offer sympathy for those struggling with addiction when we treat it as a crime rather than a disease. Substance abuse disorder, while different for every person, is frequently linked to comorbid mental illnesses and trauma. To treat one, you have to treat the others, meaning anti-drug propaganda is incapable of truly solving a drug user’s problem.
For many addicts, the initial introduction of illicit substances into their lives is first viewed as a salvation. Even if the drugs eventually ruin their lives, plenty of compulsive alcohol and narcotic users will attest that it first stopped them from killing themselves or remaining in a headspace that was deeply destructive. Instead of taking the D.A.R.E. route and pretending that drugs have no emotional benefit to anyone, Euphoria acknowledges why so many people think they feel so good. It doesn’t detract from the danger.
Zendaya as Euphoria’s Rue
I wonder a little if the good people at D.A.R.E. can be reflective enough to feel embarrassed by their earlier statement against Euphoria after the recent release of season two’s fifth episode, “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird.” This current season of Euphoria on the whole reads as a cautionary tale, letting Rue fall deeper into her addiction to frequently terrifying results. Viewers were already warned that episode five would depict Rue’s “rock bottom.” When it aired last Sunday, fans were both thrilled by the strength of the episode’s writing as well as disturbed by the state of Rue’s addiction. After her loved ones flush her pills down a toilet, she becomes violent and aggressive, kicking down a door into a bedroom protecting her crying mother and sister. She screams, sobs, and hurls verbal abuse at her girlfriend before running into the night to break into houses in search of money to pay back the drug lord that would like to sell her into sex slavery.
Throughout the night, she allows others to be hurt as she runs from cops and tries to score pills to take her pain away, and not just the emotional pain. Levinson likely knows as well as anyone the physical agony of opioid withdrawal. Once your body becomes accustomed to regular doses of a certain amount, getting clean can induce a number of painful symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, increased heart rate, insomnia, and more. The drug lord hoping to traffic Rue gives a description of narcotics’ effect on the body that’s scarier than any claim about fried-egg-brain or talking-dog hallucinations:
“You know, a doctor once told me they did brain studies on people who've done a lot of opiates, and that over time, all the chemicals in your brain that make you happy and feel good start to decrease because your body's getting it artificially. But the longer you use, it just starts to weaken and wither, kinda like a limb that's not getting blood to it anymore. And then, it just sort of falls off, and you get something called cell death, where you just have these big dead spots in the parts of your brain that used to make you happy. No matter what you do, you can't ever get it back. He said it's basically the same brain as people who've had major strokes.”
A scroll down Twitter in the days since the episode aired proves that D.A.R.E.’s gauge is off if they think Euphoria’s audience finds drugs glamorous.
I’m not gonna say Euphoria is single-handedly saving a generation of children from a lifetime of drug use. For one thing, I don’t really think children should be watching the show to begin with and creators agree. Out of the millions of viewers the series receives every week, a handful of underdeveloped minds probably tune in and get the wrong idea about alcohol and illicit substances, no matter how often the show illustrates their harm. We’ll never have data for how many young people are turned off of drugs by Euphoria but nevertheless, the show’s growing popularity speaks to positive changes in how addicts get to tell their stories honestly while an audience listens with compassion and empathy. We see why Rue does drugs and we see how they’ve permanently altered her health, life, and mind with increasing devastation. That’s a hell of a lot more helpful than a program that treats addiction as a crime and reduces the complexities of substance abuse to demand you “Just Say No.”