Editor’s note: More information about “Visions” is available on the Web at www.visionsrecoveryplay.org.

I knew of “Visions” for some years before I actually saw it. The play is the core of Recovery Productions, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to substance abuse prevention and recovery education. The Addiction Treatment Providers of New Jersey 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 have performed in auditoriums or treatment programs, although they did once perform at the Capitol in Washington. And while I had heard a lot about the play, I was not prepared for the emotional ride I was about to take.

The stage is set simply — only a few props depicting a street corner, a kitchen, and a couple of 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 somewhat 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 every day and “you better get used to it.”

In a very moving scene, a young man decries his mother for putting up with her abusive, alcoholic husband, his father. He swears to dad in a humiliating, 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 overwhelming. 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.

Playwright Robert Lo Bue and his players have much to be proud of in their performances. They have reached an audience in New Jersey that treats the toughest of the toughest clients and they have succeeded in bringing a renewed awareness of despair, hopelessness and the grace of recovery.

Jim O’Brien, MSW, CADC, is Executive Director of the Addiction Treatment Providers of New Jersey (www.atpng.org). He lives in Glen Ridge with his wife Sherry, son Luke, 15, and daughter Lizzie, 11.

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, August 2004, v.5, n.4, p. 70.

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