Sex, Drugs, and Chess: Talking with Teenagers About The Queen’s Gambit
Warning: Spoilers below related to plot points of The Queen’s Gambit.
The Queen’s Gambit is an enthralling miniseries – lifted by a strong performance by Anya Taylor-Joy and an fast-paced narrative, we’re carried into the world of competitive chess by the character Beth Harmon, a high-functioning likely-autistic chess savant who breaks through gender walls to take the international chess world by storm. The show has been a massive success, becoming Netflix’s most-watched miniseries to date, and inspiring many otherwise chess-naive viewers to take an interest on YouTube and online chess sites.
The show may be an incredible publicity vehicle for chess and an entertaining several hours of television for viewers, but it has also created complications for parents who didn’t take the TV-MA tag seriously: Beth uses an addictive sedative drug called chlordiazepoxide (a benzodiazepine, like Xanax or Valium) to escape from emotional pain and to better visualize chess moves. While the narrative progresses to show how Beth’s use of drugs and alcohol are ultimately self-destructive, kids watching the show (and particularly if they only watch the early episodes) may identify with Beth’s desire to use drugs to escape from stress and to excel at school. Children may also fall victim to the “I would do it better” trap, feeling convinced that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes Beth made if they use drugs in the same way.
And, unfortunately, today’s youth are very likely to identify, as they are often in similar situations: struggling with emotional difficulties and having easy access to alcohol and drugs, or struggling at school and wondering whether a stimulant (like Adderall or Ritalin) would solve those problems. And there’s no shortage of media available to kids that models, or even glorifies, drug use: vaping and marijuana content abounds on social media, and if parental controls aren’t activated on streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, or Amazon Prime, there are numerous other available with heavy drug themes.
Which leads us to our primary question: as parents, how do we help our kids understand how to interpret “The Queen’s Gambit,” or similar narratives? Although there’s no perfect approach, I’d recommend these four strategies:
Don’t shy away from the positives: show your child you respect them enough to tell the whole story.
When talking to adolescents about drugs and alcohol, it’s tempting to simply vilify the substances, trying to “scare-tactic” kids from ever trying them. While this can work for some, many older children know that there are things you’re not telling them, particularly if they’re viewing media (or hearing from friends) that promotes or glorifies drug use
Simply put: if you’re one-dimensional in your explanation, they’ll trust your explanation less. It’s OK to tell them the whole story, including that drugs do often have potentially pleasant short-term effects…which is the trap that gets people into addiction and other types of trouble. If you include all sides of the issue, when you talk about the negatives (see next bullet point), they’ll take you more seriously than if you appear to be cherry-picking only the facts that support your agenda.
“Play the tape forward.”
There’s a saying in addiction treatment that you need to “play the tape forward” when making decisions related to alcohol or drugs: think about the whole arc of future consequences and risk (overwhelmingly negative), rather than just the immediate impact (some degree of positive). This is a critical aspect of explaining drug use to adolescents: even if it’s possibly helpful in the short-term (for anxiety, grades, social life, etc.), that help is an illusion, and is ultimately self-defeating.
For example, a teenager may rationalize that they’re only going to vape marijuana one time in order to fit in with a friend group they’d like to associate with. However, they may not understand that they’ll then need to repeat the behavior countless times to continue to fit in, or that in the short-term they’re risking brain health and legal trouble. As another example, an adolescent may rationalize that they’ll just use a stimulant to study for one test, when in actuality they’ve started the process of undermining their self-confidence and self-efficacy at school.
Additionally – if a child responds that “this won’t happen to me,” help them understand that every single person with an addiction also thought that “it wouldn’t happen to me.” Nobody expects to develop an addiction, yet nearly 1 in 10 of all adults in the United States has one. If you have a real-life example you can draw from your child’s life to illustrate this point – that it’s possible to have something negative and somewhat improbable happen to them – even better.
Separate fact from fiction.
As accurately as “The Queen’s Gambit” portrayed chess, it fell short on its depiction of addiction in two key areas, both of which underplay the destructive potential of addiction in someone’s life. First – no matter how much Beth drinks or takes pills, we never see her go into withdrawal. She switches from daily, heavy substance use to sobriety on a dime, and experiences no negative repercussions. This isn’t how addiction works in real life.
Second, Beth never seeks out help for her addiction at any point during the film, either from peer-support groups (like Alcoholics Anonymous or SMART Recovery) or professional treatment, and still recovers to the point that she is able to achieve and maintain sobriety, even when being directly offered alcohol. While recovery without any assistance is certainly possible, advanced addiction is a complicated syndrome that takes time to extricate yourself from, with biological (e.g., physical withdrawal), psychological (e.g., shame, self-doubt, and poor coping skills), and social (people in recovery often need to develop a new, healthy social group and draw boundaries with their old one) components.
Recognize that the social ecosystem around drugs and alcohol is very tricky for teenagers.
A primary reason adolescents use substances is social: substance use is common in certain social circles during high school, and if your child’s friendship group has all started vaping or drinking, they’ll quickly find themselves on the outside looking in if they don’t readily join in. This can be very stressful and challenging for children to navigate – try to empathize about the difficulty of the situation, as well as to validate their feelings.
As a final note, make sure to pay close attention to parental guide ratings on television shows, and take particular care whenever choosing to allow your teenager to watch a TV-MA show. I strongly recommend watching the show ahead of time, and being ready to have an honest discussion afterwards about any of the mature themes or destructive behaviors that they witnessed in the show.
Ultimately, “The Queen’s Gambit” is gem of a miniseries: enjoyable and riveting television that may very well revitalize interest in competitive chess and usher in a new wave of players. And despite potentially problematic themes related to drugs and alcohol, there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater: it’s possible for your teenager to enjoy the show along with you. Just make sure to plan ahead, and be ready for an important conversation or two.
Be well and stay safe out there,
-Dr. Weiner