Film Seen as a Sober Look at Addiction

In the current film “Clean and Sober,” the character played by Michael Keaton awakes to catastrophe. He has just learned--from the person who woke him with a telephone call--that the investments he made with embezzled money are failing fast. Then, after loading his nose with a morning blast of cocaine, he discovers that the naked girl lying in his bed has gone into a drug-induced coma.

What does a fallen yuppie do when his money, his luck and his mental and physical health have run out, and he is facing a possible manslaughter charge?

For Keaton’s Daryl Poynter, the solution is to check into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. Not to overcome his addiction--he doesn’t have that problem--but to exploit its guarantee of anonymity so he can evade the police and his employers.

That’s just the first 15 minutes or so of “Clean and Sober.” What the movie is really about is Poynter’s experiences during 30 days of cleaning up and sobering up at the clinic--his resistance to therapy, his illogical romantic pursuit of a fellow addict, and his eventual self-realization.

This is familiar cinematic drama, a cocaine update on the alcohol addiction that was explored in “The Lost Weekend” and “Days of Wine and Rose,” and the heroin addiction explored in “The Man With the Golden Arm.”

It is drama, but is it accurate.

To get some sense of “Clean and Sober’s” authenticity, The Times took Mike Maher, an addictions counselor for La Mesa’s Alvarado Parkway Institute, to the movies. Maher saw the film with a reporter last week, then sat down for a quick post-mortem.

“I thought it was fairly honest,” said Maher, director of the institute’s chemical dependency program. “It gave a fairly accurate portrayal of the complexities of the illness of addiction.”

Keaton’s character in “Clean and Sober” is neither sympathetic nor representative of the vast addicted population, Maher said. But the selfish, corrupt yuppie who can’t admit his addiction has much in common with the addicts Maher sees at Parkway, a private hospital that treats patients for chemical dependency, eating disorders and other mental health problems.

“It really showed him as having the characteristic traits of the typical addict,” Maher said. The character was “arrogant, egotistical, a know-it-all, opinionated, stubborn, didn’t think he had to follow the rules. They’re also the nicest people in the world, charming, charismatic--because they’re such con artists.”

Maher, 48, is, like the counselor played by Morgan Freeman in “Clean and Sober,” a recovered drug and alcohol addict himself. He said he worked in both journalism and advertising when he was younger but that his addictions kept him on the move (he said he has lived in 48 states) and mostly out of work. He finally sought the help of counselors, then became one himself.

In the movie, Poynter’s ability to deny his drug addiction is what prevents him from keeping his life in control, Maher said. It’s also what initially blocks him from taking advantage of the drug clinic and makes him a prime candidate for relapse.

While Poynter goes through detoxification--the physical withdrawal from cocaine--he sneaks off to make phone calls to drug sources, pleading with them to ship some into the clinic for him. He heaps insults on his counselor and regards his fellow patients as sick people with whom he has nothing in common.

Maher said such resistance is usually present in patients just beginning a drug withdrawal program, and many of them want to resist further because their addiction remains even after the detox period. Most patients, Maher said, are more open to treatment than the Poynter character, but his disgusted exit at one point in the program is not far-fetched.

Nor is his decision to return after he discovers the program is a better alternative than facing his problems in the outside world.

Poynter’s continuing refusal to admit addiction--even as sobriety stabilizes his personality--illustrates the denial that is a major obstacle to recovery, Maher said.

“Even after going through treatment, leaving, coming back, (he is) still not realizing that the key to recovery is truth,” he said.

After he yesses his way through Causeway House’s program (also typical, said Maher: “A lot of (addicts) will just comply and not get anything out of treatment.”), Poynter commits several common errors of program graduates.

First, he believes that confessing addiction to the appropriate parties will get him out of the trouble he has caused.

“When he went back to work, it was difficult for him to tell the truth,” Maher said. “When he finally did, he expected that something good would happen. . . . Instead he got fired, and he couldn’t understand that.

“That’s part of the con aspect of the alcoholic or the addict,” Maher said. “When they finally start telling the truth, they think everything will be wonderful, they’ll get out of certain things, they’ll get off the hook. And sometimes that happens. Then when it doesn’t happen, it floors them. You know, it’s devastating.”

Poynter also makes the mistake of starting a romance with another recovering addict shortly after completing the program.

“We don’t recommend that people start off in new relationships in their early recovery, and he tried to get into one,” Maher said. “Recovering people think: ‘Wow, isn’t this nice? I’m clean, you’re clean and now we’re going to go off into the sunset of sobriety together.’ But there’s too much stress in a new relationship. And so usually what’ll happen is one or the other or both will end up relapsing.”

Maher said Poynter’s chances of recovery are actually better than those of the woman he is attracted to (played by Cathy Baker). When she leaves, she is faced with an ex-con boyfriend who wants her on drugs because she is more easily controlled that way.

“She was living with someone who was using,” Maher said. “It’s real hard to stay clean while living with someone that’s using. . . . She’s trying to get out of that but doesn’t know how. Here’s a guy who’s trying to stay clean, and she figures maybe, just maybe, this’ll work.

“Now she’s torn between the two (men) and does what addicts typically do: She goes back to using. . . . It’s very dramatic in the film, but it’s not atypical.”

In real life, such problems might be circumvented by a recovery program that addresses the problem of relapse, Maher said.

The 6-month-old Renaissance Program at Alvarado Parkway, for example, offers relapsed addicts one-on-one counseling, group therapy and lectures to help them determine what behaviors trigger their relapse and to develop strategies to avoid them. Participation in support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous can add to the effectiveness of counseling, Maher said.