"The attack is psychological, Damien."

How 'The Exorcist' eerily presaged my sister's death

For reasons I cannot fathom, my father decided to take me to see “The Exorcist” one summer evening, when I was 7.  Time does not allow full exploration of the film’s invasive impact.

I remember I wanted to sleep in my little brother’s room for a bit.  I was terrified he too might become possessed; I still thought of films as capturing real events. 

The events of the story are familiar: the demonic possession of Regan McNeil, a charming pre-pubescent girl, whose mutation into an obscenity and vomit-spewing hellion remains shocking even now. 

The film’s verisimilitude derives from the cast’s commitment and director William Friedkin’s documentary-like approach (he died last week at 87.)  We see doctors performing tests on Regan and getting nowhere, a medical realism amplifying dread.

Then unfurls the traumatically uncontrollable possession, an onslaught of violent chaos—much like the grip of addiction or compulsivity: unstoppable and destructive.

Many patients report hearing a savage “inner critic,” which sounds to me like the devilish raspings of the possessed Regan.  You’re a walking joke, you piece of shit!

In my own life and work, I have seen the possession of souls via vodka, Xanax, pot, porn, and of course gin, my father’s favorite. 

Even as a seven year old, I sensed danger lurking, in a way that felt real.  Yet I was told it was “just a movie,” teased for being a scaredy-cat.  What was personally tormenting became inexpressible.

For the longest time, I sweated with the terror of something bad happening to my little brother or sister, or parents, the threat of evil forces witnessed as real in the film (thanks a lot, Friedkin.)  This is exactly what happened later, as my sister’s drinking worsened in adolescence and adulthood. 

My childhood home became a banal hellscape in adolescence, the spirit of gin spiralling around my father, grasping like toxic vines; later my sister and I followed in his footsteps, though I was better at hiding it, remaining “functional” (sort of.)

The film’s emotional down-spiral is anchored in the character of Regan’s mother, a loving mom whose life becomes a waking hellscape.  Have you ever considered an exorcism, Ms. McNeil?

Ellen Burstyn expertly portrays the devastation, helpless as her daughter descends.  How is this happening?   My sister and I asked each other that question as kids, laughing at the absurdity around us: the explosively obscene fights between our folks, my father’s slurred words, passing out on the floor (comfy, pop?)  Without our joking and commiseration I don’t know what I would have done.  But then I saw the same thing happening to her a few years later, both stunning and expected.

Addiction tends to “gaslight” or normalize insanity for the non-users in the system.  Laughing with my sister when we were younger kept me sane.  But by adulthood, as her drinking and mine worsened, I had good practice in distancing myself from fear, rationalizing my own consumption.  You’re young, it’s a phase…. The danger is again camouflaged.

I still get chills from the sequence where Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) tape-records Regan’s nonsensical monologue which, when played backward, reveals the growling utterance of, “Let her die…”

Eventually my sister, after a long and painful struggle, succumbed to an overdose.  She was 42 years old. In fact she would have been 54 on August 25, her birthday.

The little boy was right: danger had lurked after all.  The actual danger, however, was the growing indifference to suffering, its banal rationalization; my dad too blew off his own shame and agony, stirring another martini; the demonic cycle. 

It is true that, as is said in recovery, our parents did the best they could.  Fair enough. But my sister is still dead.  (My father passed three years before she did.)

What is demonic in part about addiction is its normalization.  Gradually the addicted one and their friends and family adjust, children especially; they have to. 

The unthinkable becomes commonplace.  As I sobered up, aware of my own rationalizations, I worried about her.  I dreaded that harder drugs were in the mix. Unlike Regan, there was no Father Karras on the horizon. How bad is it? Is this the night I get that call?

A few patients have gotten that call, when their loved one died by overdose or suicide. The vacuum-like absence is devastating.

One of the bitterest ironies for me, when that call came, is that by then I was sober and working as a rehab counselor. 

How could I have lost my bestie from earliest days?  Why did it have to be her, one of the kindest people I knew?  How could my father not see what he was doing to us, to her, a daughter who adored him?  I hate that Andrea will never meet her niece, my daughter, their humor so similar.  How can it be?

At the center of it all is a shameful vulnerability demanding cover.  Regan’s mother turns to religion because she has no other choice, much as I turned to AA when it became the last stop before oblivion.  I begged Andrea to join me.  She would or could not.  Should I have tried harder?

There is a dark mystery at the heart of The Exorcist and an alcoholic family system, manifested in my case in a father’s deciding to take his young son to see such a film. Our family needed an exorcism (by a rabbi, in our case)—of rationalization and years of bullshit. My father’s terror of shame did not allow it. 

So I stayed the precocious, perfect boy who could handle anything, my sister a cheerful and kind girl with nary a negative word for anyone, least of all her dad: a suffocating role for both of us. 

Alcohol brought oxygen, until those spirits too possessed us, like the roles we had to play—aspects of the ritualized normalization and neglect that drive the gothic misery of addictive systems. 

I miss her so much.