I hopped over to Kendall Square in Cambridge to see the movie, Ben is Back over the holidays. I used to do this, hop over I mean, to Lincoln Cinemas for many years in New York city. This was how I caught up with excellent movies from around the world including City of God (Brazil), Lives of Others (Germany) etc. Kendall Square Cinema is in the same genre. So when a movie featuring a box office star like Julia Roberts was not playing anywhere in Boston except Kendall Square, I cocked my curiosity ear and hopped.
Three years ago I was at a conference of Governors in Des Moines, Iowa and noticed that the policy makers were discussing the problem of opioids. I confess I had to look up the spelling of the word and search for it on google to even get a handle on what they were talking about. Since then I have been seeing this topic pop up in speeches here and there.
As one looks into it, the numbers are staggering. Starting in the 1990s the deaths due to opioids in the U.S. have gone up 10 fold from approximately 8,000 per year to 80,000 per year. That is approximately 150 deaths in every congressional district in the country every year - mostly young men.
In comparison the deaths due to diseases like Cancer and Alzheimers are five-fold in the range of 400,000 to 600,000 per year each in the U.S.
But as this figure illustrates, the deaths due to opioids is exploding in our midst, by growing exponentially.
This paragraph in Sullivan's essay is just mind boggling: "It’s hard to convey the sheer magnitude of what happened. Between 2007 and 2012, for example, 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills were delivered to West Virginia, a state with a mere 1.8 million residents. In one town, population 2,900, more than 20 million opioid prescriptions were processed in the past decade. Nationwide, between 1999 and 2011, oxycodone prescriptions increased sixfold. National per capita consumption of oxycodone went from around 10 milligrams in 1995 to almost 250 milligrams by 2012."
However, all these numbers can be abstract on the one hand and mind numbing on the other. What one needs is a story to bring this issue to life. And the movie, Ben is Back does so quite effectively.
Holly Overmatched
Julia Roberts as Holly, fully immerses herself into the role of caring, cheerful, strong, "have seen life and can handle it," mother. Her son Ben, played by the movie director's son Lucas Hedges, shows up unexpectedly at home for the holidays from his recovery center. The step father and sister are quite wary of Ben. The step father is wary enough to call the cops at the first instance. But Holly feels like she can handle the situation.
Sitting in the audience watching the movie, I felt that Ben was going to crash any moment - which makes for a suspenseful experience.
The arc of Holly's slow and growing realization through the course of the movie about what she is dealing with, about her son's addiction, is also our arc of what we are dealing with in society.
I do have a significant quibble with the second half of the movie. It seems like the director did not have the courage to trust the material and shifts gears to make the second half a light adventure/mystery.
Surprisingly the adventure/mystery works as well to keep us engaged. But upon reflection it felt like the director did not trust us to stay with the original premise and needed the "high" of adventure to keep us engaged.
But I will not subtract any points for that decision. The movie takes on a important topic and executes it in a very engaging way. The acting is top notch!
The subject is not for the faint hearted.
And it is sobering to realize opioid addiction can fell a person and their family even if they are not faint hearted.
6 comments:
And it seems that we haven’t entirely learned our lesson:
New York Times: What Advocates of Legalizing Pot Don’t Want You to Know
As Americans consider making marijuana a legal drug, it would be wise to remember the choices that fueled the devastating opioid epidemic. Decades ago, many of the same people pressing for marijuana legalization argued that the risks of opioid addiction could be easily managed.
A half-million deaths later, we have learned how wrong they were.
Marijuana’s risks are different from opioids’, but they are no less real. Let’s remember that hard truth as we listen to promises that allowing the use of this drug will do no harm.
Oh gee
We desperately need our public officials up and down the chain to be informed, vigilant, wise and strong!
Is this too much to ask? 🤔
Good review. Can mothers handle what therapists can’t ?
Wow Julia..i am tempted to see this movie she playing motherly role emotional war with addicted son...she a powerful actress
i have seen her pizza/ pretty/.. notting/..sleeeping./. and yr reviews displays her role acting topnotch...
This is very interesting. There are some elements of the opioid story that people don’t know/understand:
Opioids are essential to pain management, something a huge number of people need; in many cases, pain can be debilitating
While the epidemic may have started with overprescription by MDs (in response to demand by patients... except in the cases of the rare number of inscrutable doctors), today, opioids on the street are supplied by the black market — dealers who get their opioids from China and Mexico. Deaths are often due to ingestion of tainted drugs (opioids that include or are even substituted with fentanyl)
The biggest victims of the “crack-down” on opioids are those who are suffering severe chronic pain — the MDs are only allowed to give a portion of what some patients need and only through short-term prescriptions (e.g., by the week).
Insurance companies hate paying for opioid prescriptions and are using the crisis as a front for limiting usage — they look like good citizens but are mostly guided by self-interest.
The epidemic will not be solved by over-regulating good MDs or depriving deserving patients of pain remedies — it’s a societal and criminality problem.
I feel strongly about this. People in severe chronic pain suffer greatly as a result of new medical regulations and increasingly limited insurance reimbursement. There are tens of millions of people in similar situations, particularly older folks. This is the paradox within the opioid crisis.
(Btw, I hate Andrew Sullivan, regardless!)
Great piece. You might relook at Nick Eberstadt’s Men Not Working, AEI Scholar and GCOA advisor.
His small but insightful and powerful book was one of the first to highlight the opioid issue as one of the causes of the structural unemployment issue, especially among white working class and Black Americans.
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