After Visions was presented to the Addiction Treatment Providers Conference of NJ in April 2004, this letter was penned by Jim O’Brien, Executive Director of the ATPNJ (Addiction Treatment Providers of New Jersey) to Counselor–The Magazine for Addiction Professionals
I knew of Visions for some years before I actually saw it. We invited the players to perform their work at our annual conference in Atlantic City this past April. The setting was one that was new to them – an actual theater! Mostly they performed in auditoriums or treatment programs, although they did once perform at the Capital in Washington. And while I’d heard a lot about it, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional ride I was about to take.
The stage is simply set – only a few props depicting a street corner, a kitchen, a couple chairs. The players are all volunteers, but with passion for their work. They depict the scenes that are all too familiar to people in active addiction, and that many of us who have been sober or out of the clinic for some time can so easily forget.
The play opens with a read introduction that only introduces the concept behind the work. Background music is a little cute, Enya-like. But the action starts with the old guy, disheveled, gulping from his paper-bag, making sure no one is looking. The portrayal reminds anyone who was ever drunk of the stomach retches, the passing out on the floor, the abuse one can take by the holier-than-thou passer-by. The series of vignettes that make the play include the successful and heartless junkie dealer who eventually tries his own goods, the whore, the goth-type young women who sees the junkie as her best friend and later is taken off by the all-too-callous ambulance driver who tells his new partner that these junkies die by the wagon-full very day and “you better get used to it”.
A very moving scene was the young man who decries his mom for putting up with her abusive, alcoholic husband, his father, and swears to dad in a humiliating and violent confrontation that “I’ll never be like you!” We watch as junior becomes what he swears he never will.
The vignettes convey many of the feelings of despair and hopelessness that accompany addiction. The insanity of denying the seriousness of the problem is best portrayed by the young man arrested and thrown in jail saying at one minute there is no problem and the next screaming “I need a drink!” We see him attacked by the bugs in his arms while he tries to hide from the space aliens, coming to take him away.
The miracle of recovery begins to work its way through all the characters save one (she, of course, died from the overdose). We see the light begin to shine and all are united in a 12 step meeting, where hope and comfort are sought and found. The message of the possibility of recovery from whatever depths one has gone is clear.
The play and players portray powerfully what it is like to be in the despair of active addiction. While I thought it might be a little hokey, I was dead wrong. The audience of more than 200 who shared the theater that day said nothing as the play unfolded. There was no applause between vignettes, no one went to the bathroom, no one spoke to their neighbor. You could hear a pin drop, and the impact was almost over-whelming. At one point I thought I just about couldn’t take it anymore, the emotions were very close to the top. And while I think of myself as somewhat cynical, I am wrong on this count.
Bob Lo Bue and his players have much to be proud of in their performances. They have reached an audience in NJ that treats the toughest of the toughest clients and they succeeded in bringing a renewed awareness of despair, hopelessness and the grace of recovery.
James O’Brien
Executive Director
Addiction Treatment Providers of NJ (ATPNJ)
