Euphoria’s Look at Addiction’s Impact on Families

Picking up where last week’s episode of the hit HBO series Euphoria ended, the newest episode “A Thousand Little Trees of Blood” continues with Rue’s drug withdrawal and detox. But this episode takes a closer look into how Rue’s substance use has affected her family, especially her younger sister Gia. As Rue miserably suffers through fever and other opioid withdrawal symptoms, her mother and sister care for her with compassion and sadness. You can see and feel that as Rue hurts, her family hurts too.

Later in the episode, Rue’s sponsor Ali comes over to Rue’s house to make dinner. Jokingly shooing Rue and her mom out of the kitchen so he can make dinner with Gia, Ali gently broaches the subject of how Gia is dealing with her sister’s substance use disorder and relapse. Gia was there to witness Rue and their mom’s violent confrontation depicted in the last episode and there to comfort her sister as she cried and hurt through withdrawal. Up until this point, the audience hadn’t gotten the chance to focus on Gia as all attention has been on Rue. In-between dicing tomatoes and cucumber, Ali tells Gia that it’s ok for her to be angry at Rue. Gia responds by saying that she doesn’t think it helps anyone to which Ali replies “you’re not wrong to be angry at her; that shit hurts. It’s unfair. You don’t deserve it.” Gia replies only, “I’m fine.”

Suppressing feelings and emotions isn’t healthy for anyone and can be counter-productive to the healing process for family members of those struggling with substance use disorders. In fact, suppression of negative emotions has been found to heighten feelings of that negative emotion.² Even if she won’t admit it to Ali, you can see the hurt and anger on Gia’s face.

While having dinner, Rue acknowledges that she has a lot of apologies to make to her sister and mother but wants to first go to rehab and then come back and apologize. However, familial involvement in treatment throughout the process can be very beneficial, and treatment facilities are increasingly incorporating family therapy into recovery programs.

In the voiceover, Rue bleakly says, “even if I got clean today, no one would forget the trauma.” Rue is right that forgetting isn’t possible, but healing is. Not just for Rue, but also her family. Addiction impacts so many families across the country. Addiction Talk- Family Panel looks at the stories of three women whose families have been affected by substance use.