I used to love watching TV shows with sober characters. Even though the plots were fictional, I found that there was a lot I could relate to. Watching shows about recovering alcoholics was fun because I saw bits of myself in the characters.
I also loved these shows because they helped normalize sobriety. When I was a kid, addiction was so stigmatized that I never could have imagined an addict being portrayed in a positive light on TV, even if they were in recovery. These days, there are more shows with sober characters than I could count. There are even huge, big-budget sitcoms like Mom, which are centered entirely around the idea of being sober.
The showrunners really deserve to be applauded for featuring characters who struggle with addiction but remain human and relatable. I believe there’s a real-world impact to that kind of storytelling, which could truly help addicts feel more comfortable getting help.
Yet, despite all of these positive aspects of these shows, in recent years, I’ve stopped watching them entirely. I’ve also stopped watching movies about addicts, and I even avoid books about them. Why? Because there’s something nearly all of them have in common that I believe is doing a huge disservice to recovering addicts:
