This is a serious honor. We’ve received permission from filmmaker Kurt Neale to post his incredible new documentary, Ask: Can Love Survive Addiction and Co-Dependency?, here on Mockingbird. As you’ll see, he and his crew have given us an enormous gift, not just to those of us who’ve experienced the fearful realities of addiction and co-dependency, but to anyone who has drawn breath in the world described in Romans 7. Not to mention anyone who’s come into contact with what Andrew Sullivan calls “this generation’s AIDS crisis”. You could almost call it Grace in Addiction: The Movie. That is, the whole thing brims with honesty and humanity and compassion and, yes, real hope–the Polyphonic Spree is just icing on the cake.
Naturally, the film contains mature subject matter and language. Viewer discretion is advised.
P.S. As you’ll see, this is a work of art ideally suited for discussion. If you’re interested, I know Kurt and co are open to arranging screenings around the country. You can contact him via his website.
P.P.S. If it all sounds a tad on the heavy-side, fast forward to minute 1:19 for a hilarious Easter egg.
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8 responses to “Can Love Survive Addiction and Co-Dependency?”
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I cannot wait to watch this! Thanks for posting
What’s the Easter egg? I’m not getting it.
Also, I would recommend the interviews that follow the credits (and the Fixahol commercial lol) that are on the Vimeo site. This all hits too close to home.
Thank you very much for posting this. This was a beautiful film that struck me deeply. I’m just not sure this portrays the true Mockingbird Gospel, aka God’s gracious acceptance of the sinner, at least for me personally. This post struck me immediatley because my wife recently declared herself “codependent” after several painful conversations about my drinking. Full disclosure, I am a heavy drinker. I drink considerably more than the Surgeon General would approve of, but I am not physically dependent on alcohol, every year I abstain from all alcohol during Advent and Lent. I don’t enjoy doing this, but I have no challenge abstaining. Alcohol does not affect any aspect of my life negatively other than my relationship with my wife. Her father was an alcoholic and abandoned the family, so she has been forever affected by this trauma = transference. I know that she interprets all my behavior through this early experience. All I want to say is that the stories in this film all seem to suggest that redemption only comes from finally deciding for total abstinence from whatever substance was afflicting the individuals depicted. This is my problem with the whole AA paradigm. As I was watching, I was hoping for the story of along the lines of, “well, Jimmy never really straightened up, I’m still picking him up from the municipal jail every other week, but damn if I don’t love him!” Which to me, would be a far more convincing depiction of God’s approach to each and every one of us. The point of all this rambling is that I’m hoping, by some miracle, my wife may be able to accept me someday for the flawed, selfish, heavy drinking Eastern European man just walking in the footsteps of countless generations of heavy drinking Eastern Europeans that came before him, in the same way I accept all her flaws?? Is this too much to ask from life?
Greg, I’d imagine you can have both. A God who accepts you in spite of your “flaws” but also one who promises to rescue victims of addiction. I also wouldn’t say AA is a paradigm. It’s a channel through which God shows his love to sinners by helping those who need recovery (which, frankly, is all of us, from something)
‘everything has cracks in it, thats how the light gets in.’…………leonard cohen