Drug addiction in the intellectual - Movie reviw of "Permanent Midnight"

Movie Review - Permanent Midnight
By Lihting Li Kostrzewa
“Permanent Midnight”, English, Artisan Entertainment, 88 min., Rated R
“Permanent Midnight” is a 1998 movie directed by David Veloz, based on the autobiography by Jerry Stahl, a successful TV writer who was reduced to working at a McDonalds’ drive-thru window in Phoenix by his crippling addiction to heroin. Stahl rose from a small-time television writer in New York City to his success as a comedy writer for 1980s shows like Thirty Something, Moonlighting, and ALF in Hollywood. He met Kitty, a fellow detoxify survivor, when she drove thru his McDonalds’ window and laid eyes on him. To her, Stahl relates his rise and fall from a bed in a cheap motel. Stahl narrated a miserable tale of his life filled with self-inflicted mental, emotional and physical pain of the abuse of heroin and cocaine. Also, many horrifying scenes are replayed such as when his dysfunctional mother committed suicide he was called back home by his sister to clean up all the blood left on the carpet of the living room, as well as the graphic pervasive drug use and sex under drug influence.
In the movie Stahl’s life is an open book, with chapters about his marriage for convenience to help his British wife get a green card, the birth of his child in a hospital room while he was injecting heroin in the bathroom and missed the moment of his daughter’s birth, and how, ironically, he added on a cocaine’s addiction besides heroin outside the treatment center when he was ordered to clean up his addiction by his new writing job.
In his only chance that he was called in to babysit his own baby, he was driving her all over the town to find drugs. The only thing he had ever cared about was his own “craving”, he has no regards for the baby. Finally, he got pulled over by policemen and arrested on his drowsy state. The baby was flooded with a dirty diaper and surely given to the care of social service.
Casted by Ben Stiller, Maria Bello, Elizabeth Hurley, Jay Paulson, Spencer Garrett, Owen Wilson … (Half.com/movies/permanent midnight, imdb.com/title/tt0120788, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/permanent midnight)
Substance-Related Disorders are abnormal psychology issues I am very much afraid of and was a taboo topic in my upbringing. This movie actually is my first substance-abuse movie to watch and I cannot help to cover my eyes a few times through its pervasive graphics of drug use. However, due to my curiosity of the myth of my grandfather’s death, I decided to take a look at such a dark movie. What makes people walk on such a drug addicted life and choose to self destruct themselves? According to 2003 National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), in the past the majority heroin users were 26 or older, however, the new users were age 18 or older (on average of 75 percent) and most were male. An estimated 314,000 Americans used heroin in 2002, and 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse. (Nora Volkow, MD, Director of NIDA)
More than 70 years ago, my mother’s birth father committed suicide attributed to addition of opium according to my mother’s guess. It was a very odd myth for me, because back then he was recent remarried to his coworker, a high school teacher, like himself a Beijing University graduate. Also she had just given birth to a beautiful daughter. However, through this movie it actually gives me a little bit of insight into how a drug addict relates to his new born child. According to my mother, her birth mother was once a most beautiful, highly cultured, wealthy young lady from a very scholarly family in China. Her maternal grandmother was a woman high school principal and her great grandfather was the first person hired by Chin Dynasty to write a book of the history of education in China. Through an arranged marriage my grandfather was hand-picked by my maternal great grandparents to marry their daughter, my grandmother. However, at age 30 she died with her baby (a girl) in the delivery complication. My grandfather gave my mother away to his best friend as adoption and left all my uncles to my maternal great grandmother to care. He then moved to a different province to be a teacher there. I often thought why he decided to kill himself and disregard all the responsibilities of a farther? Is it because the opium addiction? Is shame or guilt? Or is it because of the major depression? By watching this movie of a real story of a successful writer who trashes himself in a fatal stage, I learned the power of drug addiction and the way drugs change a person’s brain and behavior. As Doctor Volkow mentioned in his NIDA report, “Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, and by neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain. Heroin also produces profound degrees of tolerances and physical dependence, which are also powerful motivating factors for compulsive use and abuse. As with abusers of any addictive drug, heroin abusers gradually spend more and more time and energy obtaining and using the drug. Once they are addicted, the heroin abusers’ primary purpose in life becomes seeking and using drugs. The drugs literally change their brains and their behavior.” (NIDA, Volkow, research report, Heroin, 2003)
What is heroin addiction?
“Heroin is a highly addictive drug derived from morphine, which is obtained from the opium poppy. It is a "downer" or depressant that affects the brain's pleasure systems and interferes with the brain's ability to perceive pain.
Heroin can be used in a variety of ways, depending on user preference and the purity of the drug. Heroin can be injected into a vein ("mainlining"), injected into a muscle, smoked in a water pipe or standard pipe, mixed in a marijuana joint or regular cigarette, inhaled as smoke through a straw, known as "chasing the dragon," snorted as powder via the nose.
The short-term effects of heroin abuse appear soon after a single dose and disappear in a few hours. After an injection of heroin, the user reports feeling a surge of euphoria ("rush") accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, a dry mouth, and heavy extremities. Following this initial euphoria, the user goes "on the nod," an alternately wakeful and drowsy state. Mental functioning becomes clouded due to the depression of the central nervous system.
Long-term effects of heroin appear after repeated use for some period of time. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulites, and liver disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health condition of the abuser, as well as from heroin's depressing effects on respiration. In addition to the effects of the drug itself, street heroin may have additives that do not really dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs. With regular heroin use, tolerance develops. This means the abuser must use more heroins to achieve the same intensity or effect. As higher doses are used over time, physical dependence and addiction develop. With physical dependence, the body has adapted to the presence of the drug and withdrawal symptoms may occur if use is reduced or stopped. Withdrawal, which in regular abusers may occur as early as a few hours after the last administration, produces drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain.” (drugfree.org/portal/drug_guide/heroin)
I will say the movie portrays the heroin addiction very realistic as the above research I collected verifies. The actor Ben Stiller portrays the drug addiction so hauntingly powerful that it will make the audience shake, a truly riveting performance. Despite some violent sex scenes, I will encourage teenagers to watch this movie before any of them even think about trying heroin. I used to think mass media portrayed the drug and its addiction as a recreational hobby for free spirits. I am glad a movie such as this one truthfully portrays the horror darkness of drug addiction, especially as it depicts a supposed intelligent, talented and wealthy young man, landing to a fatal self destruction.
In the end of this movie it showed he crawled out the drug addiction and finished his memoir. He was interviewed by many TV shows. They would introduce him with these words “in 1980s Jerry Stahl was successfully making $5000 a week as TV screen writer, but his heroin and cocaine habit was $6000 a week.” “He lived in a double life, in the morning people in the office were enjoying their coffee and he was enjoying heroin and syringes to get pleasure and high.” Recorded from his own words “in Hollywood you want to show up with merit every day, so I used “junk” to shoot and jump every day”. But deep inside he had so much self hatred as his wife commented in the movie. For Stahl the craving for “rush” might be the temperate way to ease out the emotional tension and pain but it eventually brought him to permanent midnights. He said the worst thing was even though you got high during the days by every evening you had to face the scare you did not even have money for a PTA potluck or gas bill, and you woke up 3am for a narcotic hell.
Once I was admitted to ER for a serious stomach flu, the nurse gave me two shots of morphine. It was amazing powerful relief of pain. I kind understand of the feeling of “rush”, a warm, pleasant relief. “However, patients with strong pain who need opiates to function have few if any problems leaving opiates after their pain is resolved. This may be because the patient in pain is simply seeking relief of pain and not the “rush” sought by the addict.” (NIDA, Volknow, Research Report, Heroin, 2003)
And I hope my grandfather’s addiction is the result of life’s unbearable pain after my grandmother’s tragic death. However, 70 years ago there was no Detoxification treatment existed, such as Methadone treatment which started 30 years ago and Buprenophine treatment which only started recently. I guess by ending his life, it might be the easy way to get out of the addiction and shame. If so I will feel much better about the way he died. I know I can never change the things I cannot change but I would like to think he might still have the best intention for my mother and my uncles. It might well be permanent midnight for him to live.