Tagline: This is your insanity on drugs.
Or your depression.
Over and over and over again we are bombarded with all manner of advertisements for all manner of medications. And each and everyone of them has possible side effects. Some more or less benign, others more or less dangerous.
We are to see our doctor “right away” if the latter.
But: with literally millions and millions and millions of dollars at stake there will inevitably be those cases that go off – way off-- the beaten path.
Imagine for example a side effect that resulted in you walking in your sleep and killing someone. Your husband for example. Unless of course it’s about something altogether different.
And consider this:
Up to the year 2005, there have been around 68 documented cases of homicidal sleepwalking.
So, we have two gigantic industrial complexes – pharmaceutical and legal – out to enrich themselves off our accumulating afflictions.
Here the prescription was written by a psychiatrist. And god knows how many prescriptions are written each year for, among other things, anxiety and depression. And some will include new or “experiemental” medication that is said to attack the symptoms from a different direction.
You can clearly see just how murky this can all become. What is true and what do others merely want you to believe is true? What can the diabolical mind use to fabricate any number of diabolical plots?
If nothing else it depicts just how enormously complex human psychological interactions can be. Even before the part where the interactions become dysfunctional. There are simply too many variables to ever imagine fitting them altogether in order to understand why we do this instead of that. Not counting all the actual out and out lies. The fraud. The flim-flam.
This one also hits home because some years ago I was impaled by depression. Twice. It is almost impossible to describe just how debilitating it can be to those who have never been depressed. Really depressed. As Dr. Banks notes, “a psychologist once said ‘depression is an inability to construct a future’”.
How bad can it get? Start here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_Visible_(memoir
But…
That is not really what this movie is about at all. Instead, the film reconfigures into a “thriller”. All that “psychological stuff” becomes considerably more self-serving. And then you’re not really sure what to believe. Or who to believe. Think for example Final Analysis above: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=179469&p=2506745&hilit=final+analysis+directed#p2506745
Unfortunately, I found the other part [the first half] far more fascinating.
IMDb
[b]Jude Law admitted that he felt insecure as an actor playing the lead role, as it was his first performance in which he was playing a husband and father, as he is in real-life, and his first role where he used his normal accent and did not have any hair or makeup change.
Steven Soderbergh considered casting Lindsay Lohan for the role of Emily and he auditioned her three times. However, producers felt that her ongoing legal issues would disrupt the production process. Rooney Mara was eventually cast for the part. [/b]
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_Effects_(2013_film
trailer: youtu.be/EFEou3MBLi4
SIDE EFFECTS [2013]
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
[b]Emily: Why are you here?
Jonathan: I’m a psychiatrist, Miss Taylor. Normally, when people hit things with their car, there are skidmarks on the pavement. A brick wall is a pretty good reason to use the brakes, turn the wheel. You didn’t do that. You went straight into it.
…
Jonathan [pointing to a prescription]: I want to start her on this. It’s called an SSRI. It effects the neurotransmitter in the brain called serotonin.
Martin: And what does that do exactly?
Jonathan: Basically, it stops the brain from telling you you’re sad.[/b]
Raising [as these things always do] questions revolving around human autonomy itself.
[b]Victoria [Emily’s first shrink]: I saw her four years ago. For a little over nine months. She didn’t just have the rug pulled from under her, she had the rug, the home, the husband. Her entire life, gone. Even her health insurance. She moved into the city to find work and I never heard from her again. I’m glad she’s seeing a man this time. I think that will help.
Jonathan: Why is that?
Victoria: Never felt seen by her father. Then her husband ends up in jail and she’s abandoned again.
…
Jonathan: She says you tried her on medication.
Victoria: Oh, yes. Wellbutrin. Prozac. Effexor. Really struggled. I remember she had problems with sleep and nausea. Chills…
Jonathan: I’m putting her on Zoloft, see if she can tolerate that.
Victoria: Maybe she’s a candidate for one of these newer meds. Sometimes the newest thing gives them confidence. They see the ads on TV, they believe. I have a patient with some similar issues. I put her on Ablixa.[/b]
All those variables, all those different combinations of reactions. The ones in your head, the ones out in the world. Each of us an embodiment all to our own.
[b]Advertisement on a poster: Is depression weighing you down? Ask your doctor about ABLIXA today, and take back tomorrow.
…
Dierdre: [Jonathan’s wife about taking a beta blocker]: Is it bad that I’m doing this?
Jonathan: Everyone takes them. Lawyers, musicians - people going to interviews for big jobs. It doesn’t make you anything you’re not. It just makes it easier for you to be who you are.
…
Jonathan: Emily, I know that this is hard. But the hopelssness you’re feeling is a symptom. We have to leave that in the past. A psychologist once said, “depression is an inability to construct a future”.
…
Emily: I can’t take the Zoloft anymore. I can’t. I’m dizzy. I can’t sleep. I have no sex drive.[/b]
Next up: Ablixa. Oh, and fraud.
[b]Pharmacist: Have you taken Ablixa before?
Emily: No.
Pharmacist: Some of the side effects may include nausea, muscle weakness, insomnia, change in appetite, dry mouth, irritation. Do you want to pay cash?
…
Shrink: There were court seats at Knicks games, fishing trips at Cape Cod. It was crazy.
Shrink: One year Warner-Lambert took us to Hawaii. I gave a talk for five minutes and played 36 holes.
Shrink: What did Pfizer have to pay to make their whole thing go away? Two billion? Lilly paid over a billion to settle the Zyprexa thing. A certain rep who will remain nameless got me tickets to the World Series. Got my son an autographed ball!
Pharma rep: Well, it’s not a violation of the pharma code to buy your doctors lunch. As long as we do talk business for about five minutes.
…
Martin: Can’t she stop taking drugs? Isn’t there an alternative to…
Emily: No. God, no. I can finally sleep. I have some energy. We have sex…I’ve tried everything else. You don’t know Martin. You’ve never had this. You don’t know what it’s like. Okay? Every afternoon it’s like…it’s like there’s this poisonous fog bank rolling in on my mind and I’m paralyzed.
…
Jonathan [to Emily and Martin after the first sleep-walking incident]: There are things that we can do to make this work. Other medications that we add to the Ablixa, ones designed to deal with the sleepwalking while the Ablixa helps you get a handle on your depression.
…
Jonathan: I want to be totally clear that I am being paid to participate in this study. And if you don’t want to take part I totally understand. There are other meds besides Deltrex I can prescribe.
Patient: So, my medication is free. I don’t have to report it to my insurance company or anything?
Jonathan: For as long as you choose to be a part of the study, your meds are free. [/b]
Let’s call this “the system”.
[b]Martin [just before Emily stabs him over and again]: Those fucking pills…
…
Detective [to Jonathan]: Any idea why the dinner table was set for three, Dr. Banks?
…
Detective [holding up an evidence bag with the Ablixa]: She was taking these. For depression, right? I’ve seen the ads.
Jonathan: I’d like to speak to her, if that’s possible.
Detective: You can talk to her at Rykers.
Jonathan: It’s possible, you see, that she was asleep.
Detective [looking at his partner]: What?
Jonathan: She walks in her sleep. That’s maybe why she doesn’t remember anything. It’s a side effect of this medication. She’s had other episodes.
Detective [nodding incredulously]: She kills people in her sleep too.
…
Detective [to Jonathan]: Well, this goes one of two ways, doesn’t it? See, either she’s a murderer…or she’s a victim of here medical treatment. In which case you’re the target of a big civil suit. Either way, someone gets punished. Her or you.
…
Emily [in jail]: I never want to see another pill again…Is there anyway that someone else did it…and made it look like me?
Jonathan: I don’t think so.
Emily: I killed the wrong person…
…
Dierdre: Do you want to talk about it?
Jonathan: A patient of mine was arrested.
Dierdre: For something bad.
Jonathan: Yeah. Pretty bad.
Dierdre: Did the person do it? Are they guilty?
Jonathan: In this case, those are two very different things.
…
Martin’s mother [to Emily]: But I don’t understand it. You watch the commercials on TV, people are always getting better!
…
Martin’s Mother [reading from Emily’s letter on TV] “We go to doctors with our sadness and our faith in the hope they will guide us toward health. But instead I have gone down a path toward a misery I never could have imagined. And I have taken my loved ones with me. My only hope is that no one else follows me to this place.”
…
Jonathan [testifying at Emily’s trial]: What makes us human? What differentiates us from, let’s say, insects, is that we have consciousness. An awareness of what we’re thinking and what we’re doing. If for example I am hungry, I am consciously aware of that. And so I go to the fridge and I make myself a sandwich.
Lawyer: So you intend to make the sandwich.
Jonathan: Yes.
Lawyer: So, what you are saying is that to have intent, you must also have consciousness.
Jonathan: Consciousness provides a context or meaning for our actions. If that part of you doesn’t exist then basically, we are functioning much like an insect where you just respond instinctively without a thought to what your actions mean.
Lawyer: And that part that provides meaning to action, does that exist when we’re asleep?
Jonathan: No.
Lawyer: So without consciousness, how do we prove intent?
Jonathan: I don’t believe we can.[/b]
And that’s before we get to the arguments relating to determinism.
[b]Victoria [to Jonathan]: …the point is the cardiologist can see it coming, the heart attack, from the tests. It’s in the blood. But who can see the lies? Or the past? Or the sadness?
…
Jonathan: No, look, I went to her office. There is no Julia at work who takes Ablixa.
Dierdre: What are you talking about?
Jonathan: Why did she make up Julia?
Dierdre: I don’t know. Isn’t she sick? I thought sick people sometimes make things up.
…
Dierdre: The case is over. The photographers are gone, your partners are gone, the Deltrix thing is now gone. You’re the only one that’s still here.
Jonathan: I just want to know what happened.
Dierdre: A woman you were treating killed her husband. That’s what happened.
…
Jonathan: She’s not depressed.
District Attorney: Yeah. And you didn’t catch it and someone died. And I didn’t catch it and someone didn’t go to jail. We failed.
…
Victoria: You could get national coverage on this. “Shrinks fucking patients and manipulating them into killing their spouses”. Hot stuff. I would say this would ruin your practice…But wait. You don’t have a practice anymore. Or a wife…or a kid I’m betting. So what else can you lose? State revoke your license yet?
Jonathan: I always tell my patients, “You know what the best predictor of future behavior is? Past behavior.”
…
Jonathan: The only problem with having a crazy person for a partner is that they tend to stay crazy. You should know how difficult it is to cure a pretty girl with daddy issues.
Victoria: Nice try Jon. I’m not buying it.
Jonathan [leaning into her face, fiercely]: Spend the fucking money now. Because they’re coming to take it back.
Victoria: What are you talking about?
Jonathan: You could go and ask her. Only she asked me to keep yopu from seeing her. She told me everything.
…
Victoria [after clobbering Jonathan with her purse]: You get her out of there right now, do you hear me. You do that and you won’t hear from either one of us again. Yeah, you can go back to chatting with rich white people about their problems. She’s cured…as of right now, Jon. You’re a fucking genius!
…
Jonathan [to Emily, about electroshock treatment…as though it were Victoria’s idea]: It’s in our best interest that you start forgetting.
…
Emily: Imagine everything you ever wanted shows up one day and calls itself your life. And then just when you start to believe in it - gone. And suddenly it gets very hard to imagine a future. That’s depression, right? So I went to see Dr. Siebert…I think she always liked girls, she just never found one she liked as much as me. She taught me how to be depressed, what drugs had which side effects, what symptoms went with what diagnosis…What do you doctors call faking? Malingering? Such a funny word. Girls learn to fake things at a very early age - probably around the same time that boys are learning to lie.
Jonathan: When did you decide to kill him?
Emily: It’s not a decision you make just once. You make it over and over and over again. Everytime you look at your life and you see the position you’re in and who put you there. And it all leads back to him. Each and every fucking problem, every disappointment. And you think that maybe if he just goes away it will all get better.
…
Emily [to Jonathan]: I read somewhere that there’s a difference between tears of joy and tears of rage. Is that true? It’s in the chemistry, but you can’t tell by looking, they all just look like tears. [/b]
Meanwhile he has completely turned everything around: she’s now the dupe:
Jonathan: Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. That’s what she said about you.
Emily: And how long do you two plan on keeping me here?
Jonathan: Why would we ever let you leave?
Emily: Because…maybe there’s a better deal.