Movies where psychiatric medication is the villain
As I come off my medication, let's look to the movies...
I’m a believer in psychiatry and using the drugs that we have available to help us with our lives. For a number of years I’ve been on a cocktail of antidepressants and antipsychotics (after being diagnosed with OCD in 2018). It’s the internal, obsessive kind, rather than the manifesting hand washing kind. And the drugs have been incredibly beneficial. In fact, they have completely changed my life for the better.
The part I’ve found fascinating is the shame that comes parcelled in with taking these drugs. We weren’t even allowed paracetamol growing up and there is a general sentiment (perpetuated by the movies) that one must always be on a trajectory towards ceasing your intake. That’s the goal. When in reality your goal is to be someone else, to think a different way, to respond entirely differently to the world. And the drugs can help you achieve that.
Of course, the side effects are a huge factor. In a few of the movies below the side effects are the villain of the entire picture. And I understand that I’m demolishing my own point here, because it’s the side effects that have pushed me to come off my meds. All of it. I tapered slowly, but it’s been a week without taking anything. So, wish me luck.
But there is an element that is more instructive (and infuriating) in film: the medicine is portrayed as a narrative obstacle, a hinderance to the hero’s ability to take action and must be disposed of for them to be entirely complete. This I fundamentally disagree with, but it is so pervasive in movies that you can be sure if a protagonist is on medication in Act One we won’t be allowed to leave the cinema until they have ditched them.
A Beautiful Mind (2001) - There is a scene in this film where Russell Crowe sulks because his medication (that is helping him and preventing him from seeing a number of aggressive hallucinations, including Ed Harris in his prime) stops him from having sex with his wife. This entire film is about a sick man who can take medication for his affliction, but this renders him weak and impotent under the gaze of the movie and he must learn to live with his sickness unassisted. At the end of the film his hallucinations amble along beside him in a Return of The Jedi kind of way (though we are unsure when they might attack him again). It is a truly baffling and obnoxious piece of Oscar bait.
The Matrix Resurrections (2021) - Beyond being a ghastly cynical and unappealing film, the imagery of “pills” in the newest Matrix sequel as an instrument for evil borders on the ludicrous. Neo is trapped and medicated by a robot psychiatrist (Neil Patrick Harris) and literally has to pour his coloured pills down the drain to be free. And with that freedom he indulges in some of the worst action sequences of the entire franchise.
Drop Dead Fred (1991) - Rik Mayall was my God as a kid. Between his insane rendition of George’s Marvellous Medicine (which they should package up and release as a film) to The New Statesman (a sitcom about Thatcher’s Britain that I sat through as a nine-year-old and claimed to love) he was unrivalled. And for me the centrepiece of his career was a film where he played the imaginary friend of Phoebe Cates. She eventually pops pills (at the encouragement of her evil boyfriend) to give Rik Mayall belly ache and make him disappear but, according to the movie, this is the incorrect way to banish Fred. She needs to be rid of him, but not with pills (which are bad), but through an emotional dream sequence (which is good).
Garden State (2004) - This is peak Natalie Portman, I appreciate that. But, boy did I alienate a lot of people by hating this movie. Two years before its cutesy, spiritual sequel Little Miss Sunshine, Garden State represented the moment when movie studios understood there was huge cash in what an audience believed to be “arthouse cinema” (when they were really watching cheap, sentimental fare with actors from TV shows). Scrubs alum Zach Braff (who writes and directs here) stars as Andrew who takes us through a classic “medication numbs you to the world” motif. Only once clean can he fall in love with “a quirky, vibrant girl” (Portman) as she shows him how to “reengage with his feelings” (quotes taken from the official synopsis).
Here’s a couple where making the psychiatry the villain is probably justified:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) - Jack Nicholson’s greatest film (you know the rest).
Dopesick (2021) - Though most of the characters (that aren’t well-known pharmaceutical moguls) are fabricated, this is a quality drama with a heavy 90s energy (fleshed out to many episodes and released on Disney+ last year). Michael Keaton is here for all your awards as a doctor who initially prescribes oxycontin and then get’s ADDICTED to it. I know! Executed better than it sounds.
In Alibi Investigations news: the podcast Alibi has been picked up by reVolver, a podcasting network in the US. We are going into an advertising distribution deal together.
This week we will be having our first training session for African journalists. We’ll be teaching investigative podcast creation. They have submitted some very exciting stories that we’ll be helping them develop into podcasts.
Everyone uses drugs of some kind. From coke to caffeine to cortisol-producing aggression. Humanity has always been equal parts high and sober. A war on drugs is as ridiculous a concept as a war on sex. As always, the most positive outcomes result from a balanced consumption both on the individual and collective levels. We all know there is such thing as being too reliant on psychoactive substances. Now for acceptance of the fact that there is also such thing as being too sober of them.