The events in Rue’s life shown in “Euphoria” are extreme, and as Season Two aired, a conversation emerged among the show’s critics questioning whether Rue’s story is an accurate – or responsible – depiction of the experiences of a young Black woman battling addiction. On the inside, I was suffering from grief, depression and anxiety. Still, even with all of this happening to me, I remained a high-functioning ambitious person and I looked like the strong Black woman that people expected me to be. Drugs were an omnipresent part of my life from 2009 to 2014. I did not have the coping skills to properly work through that kind of grief, so I used drugs. I was not prepared to lose my mother at 18 years old. My mother passed away from a sudden heart attack in September 2008. While we as a collective audience have been watching Rue’s story of loss and struggle, I feel like I’ve been watching a version of my own. In the season’s first episode, she takes various drugs and nearly goes into cardiac arrest in the laundry room at a New Year’s Eve party, while in episode 5, she engages in a wide variety of violent and destructive behavior toward everyone around her before ending up in a dangerous situation with a drug dealer to whom she owes a large sum of money. In Season Two, which recently concluded, we’ve seen a deeper examination of Rue’s descent into drug use – a response to grief over the tragic death of her father. Denayja Reese Courtesy of Taylor Washington / Waylor Photo
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