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Phil Stark is a screenwriter, author, and licensed marriage and family therapist. His credits include South Park, That ‘70s Show, and Dude, Where’s My Car? The following blog is an excerpt from his book, The Characters On My Couch, a "collection of therapy sessions with popular film and TV characters."
Intake Information: Client is a 42 year old male who has been mandated to attend therapy following a forced leave of absence from his executive position at an advertising agency. Client reports his use of alcohol was a factor in this decision. Client is divorced and remarried, with three children from first marriage, and reports no previous therapy experience.
Don Draper sits on the couch across from me, wearing a suit and tie, shoes shined, hair slick, holding a fedora on his lap.
“So that’s all there is to it? We just talk?” Don seems confused.
“Pretty much,” I reply. “I know it sounds simple, but it’s what we talk about that can get complicated.”
“Sounds about right.” He sighs with resignation, then fishes a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. “Well, let’s get it over with.”
He’s about to light a cigarette when I speak up. “Sorry, but there’s no smoking in here,” I say, trying to sound sympathetic.
“Really? Okay,” Don says, surprised, as he puts away the cigarettes.
“In your intake paperwork, you indicated that your employer has mandated that you must attend therapy as a condition for keeping your job. Is that accurate?”
“Somewhat. This is a condition for me to keep my ownership stake in the agency. It’s an advertising agency, and I’m a partner. A cofounder, to be more specific. But yes, your point is taken, which is that I’m not here voluntarily. And I’m sure you hear this a lot, but I don’t really see why I need to be here at all.”
“Well, according to your fellow partners, there are concerns about your (I read from my notes) ‘heavy drinking and dark moods.’”
“Heavy drinking, my ass,” Don scoffs. “One man’s heavy drinking is another man’s breakfast. And it’s not like I’m the only one with a bar cart in his office. My colleague Roger’s main source of hydration are the few times he puts ice in his vodka.”
“So, the use of alcohol is tolerated in the office?”
“Tolerated? It’s expected. And yes, I’ve seen plenty of colleagues be unable to handle their liquor, and have it affect their job performance negatively, but that’s not me. I’ve always been able to handle my liquor.”
“Until now?”
Don glares back at me. “Right. Until now.”
“Would you say that your drinking has become a problem?”
“A problem? I wouldn’t use that word.”
“I can appreciate that. There are plenty of words we can use to describe things. Let me ask you a few questions that might help us assess your alcohol use. How many drinks do you have in a typical day?”
“Well let’s see…” Don thinks to himself for a moment, counting in his head. “Five? Six? Unless I have a business dinner. Or lunch.”
I nod, writing this down in my notes. “Do you ever drink more than you originally intend to?”
“That seems to be the pattern.”
“Do you spend a significant amount of time recovering from your drinking?”
“I have been known to sneak in a couch nap every now and then.”
“Have you ever tried to cut back on your drinking but found yourself unable to?”
“Okay, so it’s a problem,” says Don, exasperated. “But it’s not just my problem. Everyone I know drinks. Everyone I work with drinks. It comes with the territory. It’s what kicks off every business meeting, every work dinner, it’s the first martini with lunch, all the way to the last call with an important client at the end of the night.”
“It sounds like there’s a big drinking culture in your workplace.”
“Absolutely. You’re expected to drink. It’s a given. And the guys who give up booze and go dry, they’re looked down on. They don’t get invited to the dinners where relationships are formed, where the real deals are consummated. Drinking and work go hand in hand.”
“I see. So, alcohol had already been a part of your life, but recently it’s gotten to be perhaps too big a part,” I say. “And it sounds like there’s some irony in the fact that your drinking goes hand in hand with your work, and you’ve been able to perform at a high level in the past while drinking, but that your current level of alcohol use has negatively affected your job performance.”
“Yes, quite the irony.”
Don fishes out a cigarette again, flicks open his Zippo and is about to light it, then catches my eye and realizes what he’s doing.
“Sorry. Should we discuss my smoking habit?”
“Maybe in a future session. So, how exactly did the drinking negatively affect your job performance?”
Don thinks about this. “It didn’t really. It made me feel looser creatively, more adept at pivoting during a pitch. It was a way to bond with clients. It certainly took the edge off the stresses of work. And home.”
“Okay, but the negatives?”
Don thinks about this for a long moment.
“It made me tell the truth.”
“About what?”
“About myself.”
“What is the truth?”
Don shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
“What is the truth? Well Doc, I didn’t have the greatest childhood. Long story short, I grew up in a whorehouse, and pretty early on I realized I wanted out. So I spent the early years of my life creating my own story. A new, better story. I pulled a real Horatio Alger, pulling myself up by my bootstraps, and now I live in the Big Apple, working with million dollar corporations and getting paid handsomely to sell their products to the teeming masses.”
“That sounds pretty good,” I observe.
“It does. And it is. But recently there was a meeting at work where I… I shared some details of my childhood that… Let’s just say they didn’t land well.”
“Tell me a little more about your childhood.”
Don doesn’t respond right away. He sits with the thoughts that this question brings up. It feels like a sensitive subject.
After a long moment Don shrugs. “There’s not much to tell. It wasn’t great.”
I wait silently for him to continue, but Don looks at me expectantly.
“If you’re waiting for me to go into more detail about my traumatic childhood I hate to disappoint you, but I’d rather not.”
“Okay, I get that. Of course, it’s been my experience that in therapy, it’s often the things we’d rather not discuss that are the most important things to discuss.”
“Very wise of you, but I’m going to pass. In fact, I never thought I’d say this, but let’s try and focus on my drinking.”
“Okay. So, based on your experience at work, and what you’ve described regarding your history of alcohol use, the drinking has become a problem.”
“I don’t know, who’s to say? I mean, I’ll take a few weeks off, sober up, get to bed earlier, drink more milk, and then eventually go back to work and carry on from there.”
“And the drinking?”
“I suspect the drinking will continue. Only under control.”
“Meaning, it’s now out of control?”
“Well, I’m sitting here talking to you, aren’t I?”
“Don, do you want to quit drinking?”
Don stops and thinks for a long moment, then sighs. “I don’t want to quit drinking. I just want to get back to work. It defines me. Without it, I’m scared of what I’ll be. Or not be.”
“Which, the drinking or work?”
Don considers this for a moment, then: “Both.”
“Do you think when you eventually do go back to work, you’ll be able to perform at the level your partners expect you to?” I ask.
“I do. This time off has actually been good for me. I’ve been able to focus on myself. Spend more time with my wife. See my kids more. It’s amazing how much easier it is to cut back on your drinking when you don’t have people coming into your office every half hour asking if you want a drink.”
Don takes a cigarette out of the pack and looks at it.
“I’m just going to hold this, if you don’t mind.”
“Have you been smoking long?”
Don laughs. “As long as I can remember. I smoke more than I drink. But smoking’s the least of my problems.”
“And what exactly are your problems?”
Don seems annoyed. “You and your probing questions.”
I shrug. “Just doing my job.”
He sits back and thinks. “What are my problems, let’s see. The ad agency I started is threatening to kick me out. My kids hate me. Well, just my daughter, really. And my wife is great, but…”
Don clams up, and I sit in silence as this unfinished sentence hangs in the air, until he feels the need to change the subject.
“Look, I’ve been drinking just as much as I did when I first started in this business and nobody complained about it then. It’s just what you do. It’s just the way it is.”
We sit in silence for another long moment. This time I break it.
“You said a moment ago that your wife is great, but…”
I wait for him to finish the sentence, but he doesn’t.
“But what?” Don asks.
“That’s what I’m curious about. The what.”
He thinks for a long moment, confronting something he’d rather not confront.
“I do things that undermine our relationship.”
“Is this related to your drinking?”
“Not exactly. But it certainly doesn’t help. Anything that seems like a remote possibility sober can seem like a grand slam after three fingers of the brown stuff.”
“Can you tell me about some of these ideas?”
Don sits for a long moment, thinking deeply, assessing the situation.
“I’ve been unfaithful. Multiple times. With multiple women. In fact, I can’t remember ever having a relationship where I was faithful. I don’t know why. It just seems to happen.”
Don stares off into the distance wistfully as he continues. “I was unfaithful in my marriage. My first one. And my second one. The current one, I mean. I just find myself attracted to other women. I crave their attention. And it doesn’t matter how attractive my wife is. I mean, Megan is a television actress, for Pete’s sake. She’s gorgeous. She’s the kind of woman men fall over each other for just to light her cigarette. And yet I find myself seeking out others.”
Don sits with what he’s just said, holding the unlit cigarette, examining it but clearly not thinking about it, focusing on something else, something farther away.
“I have a dark history, Doc. My childhood, growing up, the war…”
“Which war?”
“I was in Korea. But I don’t want to get into it, that’s a whole other ball of wax.”
“Might any of that be related to your drinking?”
“Most likely, but like I said, I don’t want to get into that.”
“I can appreciate that, but it’s often the case—“
“I know, whatever I say I don’t want to get into is obviously what I should be getting into. But remember, I’m not here voluntarily, this is a work requirement, and I just want to do the minimum of whatever I have to do here with you in order to get back to work.”
“Fair enough.”
A long silence. This time I break it. “What drew you to work in advertising?”
“I’ve always been good at selling things. At first it was cars, fur coats, whatever needed selling. But with advertising, I’m not really selling things. I’m selling ideas. Of course, selling ideas leads to people buying things. And I’m good at it. I’m really good at it.”
“What makes you so good at it?” I ask.
Don cocks his head as he thinks about how to explain this.
“I understand what people want. Not what brand of cigarettes they prefer, or which fast food restaurant has the best burger, or which airline has the prettiest stewardesses. It’s something more mysterious than that. It’s about the longing we each have deep inside us, that thing we feel is lacking in our lives. We each have a hole in ourselves that we spend our lives trying to fill. And I sell shovels.”
“That’s interesting. What if you had to create an ad for yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if there was an ad that described the current state of your life, what would it look like?”
Don chuckles softly.
“It’s funny that you ask that. It’s basically what got me fired. Or, suspended, I should say. I was pitching an ad for Hershey’s. Wholesome, family, love, safety. It’s my job to evoke these feelings in a consumer and then have them associate those feelings with the product. But what I pitched was too sad. Too revealing. I shared a memory and a feeling that were very real, but not wholesome or palatable. And I knew while I was doing it it was wrong, but… I felt compelled to do it. It was wrong, but in another way, it felt right.”
Don sniffles, having gotten emotional during this speech. I slide the box of Kleenex on the table towards him, but he takes out his own handkerchief and dabs at a nascent tear.
“You know, you were referred to me to discuss your drinking, and we discussed that, and then moved into a discussion of your marital struggles, your infidelity, but it strikes me that whatever you’re feeling right now might be the true source of the issues that led you here.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” With that, Don composes himself and stands up. “Are we done here?”
“Actually, no, we have a few minutes left.”
“Well, sorry to cut things short, but I’ve got to catch the train back to the city. Do I have to come back?”
“Professionally speaking, I think there’s more emotional material here that would be worth examining. But in relation to your therapy mandate, I think that would be a more appropriate question for your partners. Or your lawyer.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll have my girl call yours.”
Don grabs his hat and overcoat as I cross over to open the door for him. I hear his Zippo flick and spark as he lights a cigarette on his way out.
I close the door behind him, then sit down to write up my notes.
Clinical Notes: Client presented with a confident affect, discussing his relationship with alcohol and the pervasiveness of alcohol use in the advertising industry. Client is mandated to attend therapy by terms of his agreement with partners at his ad agency, which he was suspended from as a result of behavior resulting from alcohol use. Client discussed his drinking habits, how they fit into his work experience, a childhood he described as being traumatic, his marital struggles (divorce, infidelity), and towards end of session, revealed that the reason for his suspension was linked to revelations about his traumatic childhood in front of agency clients, which Client declined to go into detail about. Client left session early, and Therapist is unsure whether treatment will continue.
Diagnosis:
F10.20: Alcohol Use Disorder, Moderate
Z63.0: Relationship Distress with Spouse or Partner
For more therapy sessions with popular film and TV characters, check out The Characters On My Couch. To find Phil Stark's other work, check out his Amazon page or his Linktree. If you want to hear our discussion with Phil, you can watch it here.