Dark, Demonic, and Dopesick: Addiction in Horror Cinema

9/1/2023

Contributor David Scott, Recovery Specialist for University of Pittsburgh and avid horror fan, breaks down how the genre has represented addiction and recovery in modern times and how staying spooky has helped him overcome his own personal demons.

Let me tell you a few stories…

“Sarah is being stalked by an unseen killer as she desperately cries out for help. The cries fall deaf, however, as screams of joy and laugher drown out all other sounds in the city streets while the bars let out. She is alone and soon will be isolated and trapped by this evil as it rips apart her flesh and destroys everything that she loves.”

“Sam looks at his brother Joe approaching…but this isn’t Joe. This is the walking dead. Sam starts to walk towards him. All he wants to do is help his brother, but he is reminded of the carnage done to the other families down the block and he must make a quick decision. The right decision. Sam finally gets his wits about him and runs. Hoping that soon this madness will end.”

“John came to the conclusion that this was no longer a craving, but a need. If he did not have the liquid he desperately hungered for, he would be no more. “How did it come to this?” John thought. Jessica had given him a small taste of hers and, all of a sudden, here he was suffering an incurable fate.”

These stories, although small, capture various tropes within the horror genre. Each one of these has played out in some variation across the silver screen for decades. Surely Sarah’s “unseen killer” is a maniacal slasher in search of his next helpless victim, poor Dean and Joe got caught up in a zombie apocalypse, and damn Jessica for turning John into a vampire. However, while I changed names and added a bit of melodrama for flare, each of those stories have a basis in a real-life account I’ve heard in my time in mutual support meetings for addiction.

When I started to work on this piece, I wanted to approach it with extreme sensitivity. Horror isn’t the most revered genre of film after all, nor is it the most digestible, and when mixing it with a subject matter as deep, personal, polarizing, and political as addiction and recovery, I questioned whether this would cause more damage to an already vulnerable community. Beyond a wide range of the stigmatization that happens to people that struggle with a substance use disorder, there is also exploitation. Certain reality shows and daytime talk shows have made it evident that sometimes “awareness” can cross lines into something almost grotesque. So how do I safely not cross that line from awareness to exploitation when the subject in which I’m incorporating it with is known to the public for being…well…grotesque?

     In my time not only as a recovery specialist and researcher, but also as a person in recovery myself, I’ve learned that recovery itself is subjective. There’s no guaranteed “fix” to the problem of addiction, nor is everyone going to view it the same. What I can share with you is what helped and still helps me to this day…the feeling that I’m not alone. The feeling that there is some understanding to the anguish I felt of knowing what I was doing to myself and loved ones but also feeling trapped and believing that my life depended on my use. Despite the gruesomeness and possible exploitation of the subject, horror, for the most part, presents the ability – or at least the need -- to overcome certain death.

          The general public does not often look at horror as a thought-provoking genre. In fact, it often feels that in order to understand and appreciate the nuances of the genre, you must be a deeply-immersed fan looking beyond the blockbuster for the films that have a deeper meaning than a jump scare or the ultra-violent hack and slash. For us, the horror fans, it’s a given that Romero’s Dawn of The Dead (1978) is a commentary on the mass consumerism of the 70’s, but to the average citizen, it’s a gory zombie movie. The experience is different for us in-the-know, but to the outside, it’s often viewed as a lesser genre with less purpose.

        So with the mindset of being “in-the-know” of both the perils of addiction and the valuable social commentary of horror, there have been several films that have stuck out to me as not only being a strong and accurate metaphor for addiction, but also to recovery itself. Within the next few months, I will analyze several films and contextualize the way they discuss addiction and recovery. In addition, I’ll share my own personal journey as it pertains to the film. Addiction is a deeply personal issue that many in America have felt indirectly or first-hand and needs to be approached with sincerity. I hope in the coming months to not only give an inside view as to how horror can be a healthy coping mechanism for addiction, but to also battle certain stigmas related to the disease itself.

       For the first stop in dissecting the world of addiction in horror, we’ll check into The Overlook Hotel, as I discuss both the literary and film adaptations of The Shining and Doctor Sleep and how family trauma bonds play into the work of Stephen King.