Drunk on Too Much Life – Film Summary

The documentary was produced in 2022 and is available here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/drunkontoomuchlife

Watching the 77 minutes documentary “Drunk on Too Much Life” is like watching a volcano erupt and trying to understand why and how to contain it.

Corrina is a young Canadian woman who has been experiencing intense altered states and emotions high and low since the age of 21. She has successively been diagnosed with psychosis, depression, Bipolar 1 among other things, and has checked herself into hospital eleven times to feel safer during these experiences. As her parents tried to make sense of what was happening to their daughter, they made a film about their journey for the benefit of everyone on the same journey and of society as a whole. Corrina’s mother, Michelle Melles, is a professional documentary and media director and producer and made the film as “a complete labour of love” in the hope that it will widen the debate about understanding and treating serious mental health illnesses.  Corrina’s dad, Pedro Orrego, is a seasoned TV writer and producer. As a family they present a lively, deeply engaging and hopeful picture of their on-going discoveries as they explore explanations other than the biomedical model of mental health, which states that mental health disturbances are due to a chemical imbalance in the brain and therefore that the cure is to take chemical drugs to “rectify” the imbalance.

The film itself is beautifully produced, with a sound track and animations interwoven with some of Corrina’s music, poetry and paintings. We are taken on Corrina’s journey from the slow building up of low self-esteem through years of bullying as a child and a teenager that culminated in a psychotic episode while at summer camp, to stays at hospital, through interviews of Corrina with her parents, her grandmother (she encourages Corrina to write poetry), with people who have had similar experiences and now offer peer support, with a martial arts artist, with the doctor and writer Gabor Mate. As her parents quickly realise doctors are not sure about the diagnosis, they notice what seems to help Corrina: writing poetry, being close to trees and touching them, standing in cold water in the lake, being connected to people around her. Corrina tells of the heavy, overwhelming feelings, but also in the same measure of feeling connected to something so much bigger than her. She talks of “a thin line between delusions and insights”. Various peer support people contribute their own understanding of their experiences. Dave Pendenque says that as human beings we are meant to function at different levels of consciousness, and we are meant to be informed by dreams. He notices that in a shamanistic culture there isn’t such a fear of altered states. 

Kevin Healy has heard voices for years and is an active member of Hearing Voices, he uses a puppet called Dave to represent a particular voice. More than any of the other speakers he communicates well the seduction and danger of altered states: “you feel really really alive, you feel all the good parts of life all at once – then you go bloodf”. He points out how the critical voices are the ones that need particular attention, they indicate what the person feels particularly insecure about. We see Healy at the hospital with Corrina as she had a psychotic episode while trying to reduce her dose of medication, he observes that he saw many people trying to get off various drugs, and that the anti-psychotic drug Risperidone seemed the most difficult drug to get off, more so than cocaine and heroin. Corina says her aim is to get off her drugs, except for anti-depressants that she feels are necessary for her stability, he reassures her she will get there, but she needs to go very slowly.

He explains how he uses now “a thousand things” to remain stable instead of drugs. He doesn’t elaborate, but Donna Green, the founder Stella’s Place, gives the answer: sleep, exercise, good food, connection….

The writer Sascha DuBrul stayed many times in locked psychiatric wards, he points out how he has found IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy useful. IFS considers that every part in a person has a message that needs to be heard, and a role to play, even if this role may need to change. IFS also says that everyone has a Self who is caring and compassionate, and who must be encouraged to play the role of parent to all the parts. He considers altered states as dangerous gifts, that he manages with medication (“now I take drugs to control my super powers”) and just like Green says that to remain stable “is all about the grounding”.

A shift happens in the film when it appears that Corrina “saw” her father’s lung cancer even before he did an x-ray. From being a victim of a cruel disease that plays with her brain, she now appears to be the holder of a gift indeed, which feeds her with creativity as well as psychic abilities. Doctor and writer Gabor Mate validates this: “you’re psychic, you see things”, an unusual departure from conventional medicine which has no place for psychic abilities in their manuals! Gabor Mate’s work revolves around trauma, and his take on Corrina’s experiences are that she is “downloading all the family trauma and pain”, he refers to a period of family life when her parents would fight a lot, and she unconsciously felt responsible. He points out that some people are hyper-sensitive and are hurt by events that wouldn’t touch others in the same way, just like burned skin feels pain where normal skin just feels a gentle touch. He then says one sentence that probably sums up the findings of the film: “my problem with the biomedical model is not that they give medication, it’s that it’s ALL they do”.

The film ends on a positive note with Corrina’s poetry, she writes “recovery is a crooked and bumpy journey, and a series of awakenings”. Her mother Michelle also talks of people being like trees and only as strong as the forest around them. Corrina clearly has a strong resilient forest of supporters around her, and the viewer is left with joy and hope.