Play the game, not the opponent
It’s been about 20 hours since our shoot last night with Jason Isbell and Dan Blom at Carter Vintage in Nashville, TN for our documentary Shame on Us: The Stigma of Addiction. In that time the same sentence has rolled around in my head non-stop.
I’m paraphrasing here because I haven’t “checked the tape” but basically Jason said at one point, “I try to play the game not the opponent.”
Dan Blom, Jason Isbell, our film’s composer Matt Farley and film director Skip Stokes discuss the shoot while the crew finishes set up.
If ever there was a sentiment needed for so many issues (and God only knows how many issues there are).
Our issue, the one in our line of sight constantly as we make this documentary, is the stigma associated with addiction. Even that focus can be confusing to people when I talk about the film. Often people will immediately go to drug addiction or recovery or overdose deaths… And while all of those conversations are important to me and worthy of much discussion it isn’t what this film is about. Go back and read the first sentence of this paragraph again.
The STIGMA associated with addiction is our topic.
Not the addiction, not the overdoses, but the stigma.
Dr. Tony Campolo once said, “A movement CAN exist without a god but never without a devil. There must be an enemy to defeat.”
I like that quote. I see that quote exemplified in our culture of teaming up in a “Kill the beast” fashion (Disney cartoon) on social media and inside our social communities with everyone drinking the same proverbial kool-aid.
It’s as though a whole lotta folks awake in the morning with the burning question, “Who am I to hate today, and why?”
With that in mind, who is our documentary FOR in the end?
It’s for the people who hold stigmatizing views toward those in addiction, recovery and families of those who’ve lost their lives to this disease.
Who exactly? You might ask.
It’s me. I am making this film for me. I know, selfish right?
I daily find weeds in the garden of my mind where I must tend the ground because of a view I have toward someone struggling. I’m an alcoholic. I even go to those secret meetings in church basements and sit in a circle to talk about it. One of the things I used to say in meetings every so often was, “You can get alcohol at the grocery store. It’s totally legal for me to buy it, take it home and drink myself into oblivion. People doing drugs are breaking the law. It’s DIFFERENT.”
I used to say that. Often.
I’m making this film because my thinking is skewed. It isn’t fully informed. It has a lot of presumption and a heavy dose of stigma folded into it.
I’ll bet you have it too. Maybe not the exact thought but search your soul a second. Think about what you think when you see someone blanked out of their mind numbly stumbling down a sidewalk in a drug induced state.
Think about that family member you hope doesn’t come to the reunion because you know it’s just going to be awkward for everyone else there when they show up.
Think about those people you know who lost a kid to an overdose and you just don’t know what to say so you leave them alone.
The list goes on, and if you’re honest with yourself, I bet you can find some weeds growing in your garden. I’m sure of it.
What does any of this have to do with the way this post started?
I constantly fight the temptation to make YOU the villain in the story. So much of my fight to end stigma wants to defeat the devil rather than love the god. Because I have seen the weeds in my garden I don’t understand why you don’t see yours, but I am missing the fact that you are still on the journey to recognizing the weeds. I gotta remember while editing this film that I am playing the game, not the opponent.
If we play the game right, the opponent becomes a team member, and stigma is defeated. This would be a solid first game in the finals of life.
