Recovering From Alcohol Use Disorder As Depicted In The Show Mom

Tanya Singh

Mom follows the life of Christy Plunkett who is a recovering alcoholic. She works as a waitress and has two children. Christie has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother, Bonnie, who is also a recovering alcoholic. As the show proceeds, they start living together and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings together.  Before embracing sobriety, both Christie and Bonnie met the criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (AUD) based on the DSM 5 criteria falling in the severe range.

The show touches upon many aspects of alcohol addiction and recovering from it. Christie’s daughter, Violet, resents her for not being a good mom to her and her younger brother when she was drunk. Now, Christie is constantly working to make ends meet and as a consequence, can’t spend time with her kids. This makes her children feel more isolated and she feels extremely guilty. Media tends to show how overcoming addiction is a onetime thing i.e. if you are able to stop drinking once, you are done with the hardest part. But the hardest part usually is not relapsing. The chances for relapse are significantly higher for Christie when she feels like she isn’t able to mend her relationship with her kids.

Through Christie’s life, the show portrays how the interplay of genetics and environmental factors lead to AUD. Bonnie used alcohol and drugs as a crutch to avoid facing her problems and in turn, alcohol and drugs became one of her biggest problems. Consequently, Christie was forced to raise herself. With constant exposure to drugs and a lack of constant social and financial support, she turned to drugs, alcohol and stripping at a young age. This depiction is in accordance with research which has shown that being born to an alcoholic parent increases the child’s risk of becoming an alcoholic. And this risk increases if the social circumstances of the child further facilitate the manifestation of the addiction.

However, so far in the show, Christie’s children have not shown any signs of AUD. This is partly because Christie quit drinking. She got a job so her children weren’t forced into dangerous situations in order to make ends meet. And because she was sober, she was able to be there for her children when they needed her i.e. provide social support. For instance, Violet ends up getting pregnant in high school. But unlike Christie and Bonnie, Violet doesn’t have to face the pregnancy alone. Both Christie and Bonnie support Violet throughout and they respect her decision of giving her child up for adoption. So it is possible that because of constant social support during stressful events, alcoholic tendencies in Christie’s children were overridden. However, making such causal claims is not easy because the interplay of genetics and environment is very specific and difficult to grasp in a general manner. Firstly, there are more than two factors which lead to AUD, like peer pressure and mental illnesses. It is likely that constant support helps in dealing with peer pressure and mental illnesses. But it is also possible that despite social support, a person starts abusing alcohol. Secondly, how these factors interact with each other and manifest as AUD in some people and not others cannot be ascertained without empirical research.

Another striking aspect of this show is the role of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings in Christie and Bonnie’s life. When Christie is unable to keep up in law school, she decides to drop out. But she has a change of heart in an AA meeting while listening to a woman who is attending her first meeting. She realizes that she has faced something which is harder than law school which is battling her addiction. I think the show depicts how AA is not a religious organization—people have the option of choosing what they want to turn to in their moments of weakness. And it doesn’t have to be God. Christie and Bonnie pray to God sometimes to look for strength. But eventually what works for them is talking to their friends from AA. Also, when they feel like drinking, they talk to their sponsor.

Despite being full of comic moments, I think the show depicts the life people trying to overcome AUD in an accurate way. Christie's life is shown from the first month of her sobriety till she’s 5 years sober. It doesn’t sensationalize addiction or recovery as many contemporary shows tend to do. It tries to portray the characters as real people, not some incomprehensible monsters who just hurt their family and friends because they are selfish and like to party.