Sherrybaby, The Wire, and the Only Addiction Story Worth Telling

Garbage People Who Get Better

I hate addicts.

Gambling, heroin, alcohol, shopping, pills. I hate it all. A lot of people make a moral differentiation between a hobo with a needle in his arm and the guy getting in debt to bet on a football game.

I do not.

I also don't subscribe to the disease model of addiction, and no amount of public health messaging is going to change that. Some substances create chemical dependency fast. Crack, for instance. But most take time. Days, weeks, months of repeated choices before the trap closes. Not to mention that everyone knows, from a very young age, what addiction is and what substances produce it. They knew it when they picked up the thing for the first time, and did it anyway. Which is why I insist that the addict becomes an addict as an outward expression of who they already are, which is, in my harsh and likely unfair estimation, garbage. Selfish garbage who will lie to your face, steal from your wallet, and ruin your Thanksgiving, then ask you to feel sorry for them because they can't help it.

I know. I'm a real treat at parties.

I do have enough self-awareness to know there's a glaring problem with my ideology on addiction: it has never helped a single addict recover and go on to have a good life. So while I may be correct about the moral architecture of addiction, correctness alone is not a useful contribution. And because I know this, I've spent years trying to figure out what, exactly, would make me extend grace to a person I instinctively want to throw away.

In 2006, Sherrybaby, a tiny indie film with a two-million-dollar budget, answered that question so completely that I have not needed to revisit it since.

Join or Upgrade

Sherry Swanson and the Problem with Pity

Hollywood has a preferred version of the addict. You have seen her a hundred times. She is beautiful and tragic. She had a good life and then something terrible happened. The substance swept in. She was powerless! There will be a scene where a kind doctor or a patient loved one explains the disease model in gentle language, and the audience gets to nod along and feel enlightened for not judging. The addict is absolved before the third act even begins.

This is a cop-out. And every screenwriter who takes the easy route knows it. Lucky for all of us, director Laurie Collyer didn't take that weasel's way out, and neither did Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Sherrybaby does not deal in pity.

Sherry Swanson is a recovering heroin addict who's just been released from prison after three years for robbery. She's not a victim when we meet her. She's a liar. She uses sex to get what she wants, trading a blowjob for a job placement at a youth center and sleeping with the halfway house supervisor. She smothers her five-year-old daughter Alexis with a desperate, clinging need that has nothing to do with Alexis's wellbeing and everything to do with Sherry's image of herself as a good mother. She is selfish, volatile, and frequently embarrassing to watch.