Binging TV While Mentally Ill

I drove past an empty basketball court the other day when I noticed weeds growing through the cracks. My first thought was about how the word weed is kind of a human diss to plants. And yet, it’s also the commonplace name for a beloved legalized drug. My second thought was that Mother Nature always persists. Our feet and our bikes our cars glide along concrete. In fact, pot holes can wreck our wheels. And yet, nature grows through it. It would feel like a missed opportunity to bring up the connection between pot holes and pot just the same as weed all over again. It leads me to wondering if this is a thesis about language. Or if I should just stick to what I wanted to talk about and see if in the end I can tie it all together like my gut told me I would.

I used to despise television. I know it’s not an original thought to say it’s a narcotic worse than caffeine and sugar. But I wouldn’t go so far as say it’s something like fentanyl, obviously.

I used to only allow myself to watch television when I was physically ill. I had the stomach flu in LA in 2016 and in between bouts of vomit, I remember binging episodes of Mr. Robot. Other than everyone’s faces squished in the corners of screens I don’t remember much…other than, well, the feeling binging the show gave me. My brain was able to totally dislocate itself from my sick reality. I was in a trance. Hypnotized.

I’m sure I was sick again before I got Covid in 2021. But it was during this waking, lucid dream that I watched some of Atlanta, Severance, and Normal People. I loved Normal People so much I bought the book the next week. This was something I’d avoided doing for a long time because I envied Sally Rooney’s success at such a young age. But her writing was undeniable. I’d go so far as to say Normal People, for me, might be the best love story ever written. I don’t know if it’s her writing. Or Daisy and Paul. Or the manner in which my sick mind absorbed it. Oh. And, of course — the score. On Spotify in 2025, Stephen Rennicks. was my top artist followed by Phoebe Bridgers as I fell asleep listening to “Together Again” every night for a year.

Was I starved for love? Or was I trying to live in a dream that was not my own?

A few months after my first feature film was completed, the cinematographer invited me to his Survivor watch group. I scoffed at the idea of watching reality TV. (What’s funny is one of the sound mixers on my first feature and other shorts has actually worked on Survivor for years but it never meant anything to me.)

But I knew I needed to be social so I watched. And I fell in love. Emily Flippen calling out Bruce. Tyson Apostol’s first confessional in Tocantins. Tony’s spy shack. Sandra’s sass. Johnny FairPlay’s grandma. Russell Hantz’s ruthless idol madness.

I watched 49 seasons in a year…some seasons multiple times. I definitely saw Heroes vs. Villains six times that year. How is this possible? Some days I’d watched eight to ten episodes a day.

And it took a whole year of this for me to realize I changed my rule. I no longer let myself binge TV when I was just physically ill. I let myself watch when I was mentally ill, as well.

My feature film led to me seeking and receiving an Autism diagnosis on top of my already established bipolar one. Guided by my psychiatrist, I was making immense med changes, often unsuccessfully. I’d become incapable of living. All I could do was watch people fight and manipulate and lie and connect and conquer.

After I’d seen almost every season three times, I had to set rules on watching Survivor.

But I found loopholes. The loophole was simple: any show but Survivor was fine to binge. Even if I’d seen them before.

Industry. Better Call Saul. Breaking Bad. The Sopranos. Twin Peaks. Girls.

And eventually any new show that popped up.

I won’t name them all but I think I’ve seen almost every major show released since last summer on pretty much every streaming network.

I even bought the book for Margo’s Got Money Troubles as I had for Normal People…and a show/book I didn’t even mention yet: Tegan and Sara’s High School…stories that gave me such empathy and compassion for a person I most definitely was not.

And when I think of High School, I think that my TV consumption was not all bad.

I’ve exposed myself to the psyche of so much, edited or not, that I feel connected me more deeply to the human condition. It helped me understand myself. I know who I am now and I think television was part of that.

I ultimately decided reading was just as important as TV. Play it As it Lays. Gravity’s Rainbow. Blood Meridian.

After swearing off binging for a month, I just watched How To Get To Heaven from Belfast and within three days I’m on season five of Hacks.

I turned on Hacks expecting a comedy. But I think I’ve cried watching this show more than any show I’ve ever watched. It is the summation of everything I love and strive to create. It’s about power and entertainment and greed and youth and aging and struggle and ego and gender and sex and failure and success and selling out and buying in and ultimately the meaning of human connection.

As much as Deborah and Ava break each other’s hearts, they have such love. And on top of all that, it’s so funny.

I have three episodes left in the series and I’m terrified because I don’t want to leave this world and come back to mine.

On top of it all, Aunt Deborah Vance reminds me so much of my grandmother. Weirdly I feel the relationship her and Ava have reminds me of the one I had with her near the end of her life.

She was such a strong, bold, fierce, protective, loving woman…who had an ego and didn’t care what you thought of that.

So…

…so…

I think back to the weeds I saw growing through the cement on that basketball court. I think about how cement is artificial. And so is television. But the emotion life carries is so powerful it always bursts through. Just like the weeds.

Or maybe I’m saying something else.

Maybe this is supposed to be a goodbye letter to binging…attempting to say goodbye to TV for a while.

Maybe I need to put the remote down and go outside. Take a walk through nature. Or even along cement…tumbling through weeds…past a person…to say — hi.

Yeah. That’s it. Maybe I’m finally ready again to feel emotion through real human connection.

Not just through a screen.

(But you know, in time, there are just some drugs and lovers you can’t fully stay away from.)