The Lost Weekend debates whether or not Don Birnam, the film’s alcoholic protagonist, is able to be “cured” of his “disease” by presenting the “alcohol philosophies” of several characters. Helen, Don’s girlfriend, views alcohol addiction as a medical problem that a good doctor could cure. Wick, Don’s brother, sees it as a physical weakness, a lack of restraint, self-control, and self-respect. Bim, the male nurse in the detox ward of the hospital, tells Don that alcoholism is a historical problem that can be blamed mostly on Prohibition. But perhaps what Don, the one who suffers the most in the film, thinks about alcoholism is most important—and most accurate (in the film’s opinion). Don seems to think that his addiction is a psychological issue. He cites failures in the past (the squelching of a promising writing career) as the start of his dependence on the bottle and difficulties in the present (his current writer’s block) as the reason why he can’t escape from his need for liquor. Yet, alcohol is still the salvation Don turns to in order to assuage the psychological pain he feels from rejection and failure and the hope he looks to for inspiration to turn his life around.

Admittedly, alcohol has split Don into two people, “Don the Drunk and Don the Writer.” For most of film, Don (in his “Drunk” identity) displays immoral and godless traits such as stealing, lying, and disregarding the feelings of others. Don sums up his irreligious way of life in a metaphor to Nat, the bartender, when instructing him not to wipe up the wet circles left behind by Don’s shot glass: “Don’t wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.” It’s a thought-provoking metaphor—and an appropriate one (mostly)—for Don’s story is like a circle itself (as is the film with its similar opening and closing sequences). There is no start and no finish to his drinking. It is constant.

Don and Nat–and the ever-present bottle–at Nat’s bar

But Don’s comparison is notable in a couple of other ways too. First, he calls the circle “vicious.” Vicious can mean “deliberately cruel or violent” or “immoral.” In using the first definition of the word vicious, power is assigned to the liquor—or, more specifically, to the entrapment caused by the spirits. What Don physically consumes rules his life and eliminates his choices. He only steals and lies because the alcohol makes him. Or so Don believes. It is interesting to note that, while blaming the alcohol for his messed-up life, Don also expresses possession of his ring of addiction: “my vicious little circle.” Even as he drinks himself senseless, Don realizes his weakness for liquor; can remember the events that led to his choosing to rely on the bottle; and is able to anticipate how each drink will affect his body, mind, and actions. So, in his philosophy of alcoholism, Don is confused. Who has the power, Don or the drink?

Don completes his circle metaphor by emphasizing that the ring of addiction has no beginning and no end. This reminds me of several Bible references in which God is called the Beginning and the End. In Revelation 21:6, God declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” A little later in Revelation 22:13, He repeats again, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” From Don’s viewpoint, the circle of alcoholism has no beginning and end—no god/God—but that is not completely true, is it? In Don Birnam’s life, alcohol is the Beginning and the End. Drink is his god— he worships it, and it guides the decisions he makes.

The circles from Don’s shot glass–demonstrating his captivity to his god, alcohol.

Ironically, toward the end of the film, the craving for alcohol leads Don to the decision to pawn the beloved typewriter his mother gave him. This typewriter is the most significant item Don owns as it is symbolic of his hopes and dreams of becoming a successful writer. Pawning the typewriter is synonymous with Don’s complete and final surrender to alcohol. Desperate and disheveled, Don stumbles down the streets of New York searching for a pawn shop that will buy the typewriter. In what Helen would term a miracle, all the pawn shops are closed to observe the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (more than a few racial overtones there…). The funny thing is, Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement,” and its purpose is to allow people one last chance to “afflict their souls” and atone for the sins they have committed in the past year—the sins between themselves and God. As he painfully lurches down one street after another, simultaneously seeking his god (a drink) and listening to what his god tells him to do (pawn the typewriter), Don poignantly participates in this idea of atonement, wrestling with his god and afflicting his soul.

This tormenting scene thick with religious implications does not lead to Don’s salvation, though (spoiler alert!). What ultimately saves Don (so we think/hope) is another religious concept—the greatest of all—love. According to Don, love is “so simple,” and yet it is “the hardest thing in the world to write about.” Don finds love in Helen, his girlfriend—but the love that changes Don, that saves his life and renews his passion for writing, isn’t a gushy romantic love but a deep, longsuffering, self-sacrificial love that picks Don up every time he falls down, believes in him even while he is failing, and waits for him regardless of how long it takes him to grapple with his demons. Where Don’s alcoholic philosophy and circle-like life are complicated and infinitely repressive, the simplicity of faithful love shatters his reverence toward his addiction and introduces hope into the end of a pretty dark film.

A desperate Don lugs his typewriter around in search of a pawn shop during Yom Kippur.

For Me Then…

Let’s just be honest here. We all struggle with something. Whether its alcohol or drugs or pornography—or what we often view as less toxic: work or television or food. There are memories we’d like to forget, insecurities we want to block out, needs we try to meet in the wrong ways or at the wrong times or in the wrong amounts—as a whole, we can potentially be a very messed-up, broken-down bunch of people. And any one of us can easily become Don Birnam, regardless of if his/her struggle is alcohol-related or not. There is a void in the lives of each of us; and, speaking from experience here, we so often try to fill the void by plugging the proverbial square peg into the round hole, which just makes the hurt that much worse, the emptiness that much deeper.

Enter that “simple” little thing called love—the round peg for the round hole. In The Lost Weekend, religion doesn’t do anything for Don. Although he doesn’t specifically seek out help from any religious institutions, the representations of religion (holidays, churches) are all around him—and they’re not super active in lending him a hand up from where he wallows on the sidewalk. But that’s not true religion like we talked about last week with Going My Way. True religion is about love. The same God who said He is the Beginning and the End also says He is love and that love comes from Him (I John 4:7). Love gives hope to Don, a worst-case scenario of drunken despair, and it can give hope to the rest of us as well.