Overview
This movie isn’t about addiction or even an elaborate allegory that can be compared to addiction, but there’s one scene specifically in this movie that I like as just a very succinct story about self-sabotage while intoxicated that stands alone.
Emmett explains how he lived his whole life in a 40 mile radius, and how he sabotages his own literal ticket out of the small town without prospects of success because of his insecurities about failing. Specifically, he makes sure to get so drunk that he would fail to wake up in time to move and pursue the path of a student athlete. This kind of self-sabotage, the fear of success, is extremely common to discuss in recovery circles. From one angle, failure can be humiliating if you have to face the idea that your estimation of yourself was wrong. For some, they have become so accustomed to expecting failure that success simply doesn’t make sense to them, as if they’d be pretending to be someone they’re not in a way that resembles imposter syndrome. So, if someone drinks to cope with their failures, and they drink to sabotage their own successes because they can’t imagine anything but failure, you have the profile of someone whose self-destructive habits risk arriving at alcoholism.