Reflecting on rehab
Spanish writer and director Javier Giner speaks to DQ about drawing on his life experiences for Yo, Adicto (I, Addict), the compelling and poignant story of a man who vows to turn his life around after spiralling into addiction.
With Spanish series Yo, Adicto (I, Addict), writer and director Javier Giner helms a raw, gripping drama about addiction, healing, redemption and self-discovery. It’s also based on his own experiences.
The six-parter stars Oriol Pla as Javi Giner, a 30-year-old film publicist who voluntarily checks himself into a rehabilitation centre as his alcohol and cocaine addiction spirals out of control, having been diagnosed with an impulse-control disorder.
After living in a spiral of self-destruction for several years, he vows not to leave the centre until he has fully recovered. Facing the biggest challenge of his life, he is surrounded by nature and supported by his social worker Anais and a cast of memorable fellow patients as he seeks to completely turn things around.
Nora Navas and Pilar Bergés also star in the series alongside Ramón Barea, Marina Salas, Itziar Lazkano, Bernabé Fernández, Catalina Sopelana, Vicky Luengo and Omar Ayuso. Produced by Alea, it is written by Giner and Aitor Gabilondo, based on Giner’s autobiography, and directed by Giner and Elena Trapé (Las distancias).
Following I, Addict’s world premiere at the San Sebastian International Film Festival last year and subsequent launch on Disney+ in Spain, the drama is now available on Disney+ in the UK.
Here, Giner tells DQ about adapting his life story, first as a book and then as a television series, blending fact with fiction and partnering with the show’s charismatic star.
How did you approach making a series so deeply personal to you?
Well, funnily enough, at some point throughout the process, I decided to switch off that thought. I wrote the book and made the show in a psychotic way. I didn’t want to think this was a show everyone would watch or a book that would be in a bookshop. I thought if I let those thoughts come in, I would never do it. So I tried to erase the shame, the fear, the dizziness of thinking you’re telling all of this and someday it will be in the hands of people you don’t know. It was one of the first protections I put on myself.
After writing the book, how did you want to bring your story to the screen?
The book was like throwing out everything I had inside of me. I wrote the book always thinking that only five or six people would read it. Not in my wildest dreams did I think it would have the repercussions it has had. But having written the book and come out as an addict, it helped because I could already get into the space of a TV show creator and treat the book as if it was someone else’s all the time.
The transformations from book to show would be the same if the book were written by you. Of course, a therapeutic course of rehabilitation is deeply psychological and private, so conveying that internal monologue through a show of six episodes was one of the biggest challenges. Another major challenge was how to be honest and bleak but, at the same time, empathic and emotional; how to be raw while also explaining the humanity; how to be realistic and honest with reality to destigmatise the conditions of addictions and mental disorders. There were many challenges but I faced the adaptation as I would have faced the adaptation of any book.
Writing the show with Aitor, how did you consider the boundaries of fact and fiction, and where did those lines blur?
There was a fundamental rule from the get-go, which was that everything that happens in the show is real, or took place in reality. But that doesn’t mean it took place as told. From the beginning, I understood that the character on screen, even if he has my name and goes through my experience, he’s a character. I was telling a colleague that when I’m directing Oriol, who’s playing me, we always talked about Javi as a third person, as someone else.
Coming back to the adaptation, an essential rule was to have nothing in the show that didn’t take place. Everything is real. I was telling Aitor, ‘Don’t respect me. Don’t respect Javi as a person. We don’t have to hold on to reality in such a way.’ For example, in the first episode, there’s an intern who Javi tries to seduce and take to his bed. Well that doesn’t exist, that’s pure fiction. But what is real is a way of relating to people where Javi cannot see other people. He objectifies people in such a way that he uses them to fill his own void. I’m talking about the transformation here.
In episode two, you have a supporting actor, Vicki [Luengo], who plays this secondary character, Rui, with a very bad ending. That character is based on a real woman I met, but the way she ends up belongs to another person, so I put those two stories together. In the end, it was about shaping or putting all the ingredients together to create the show. The only boundary I set was that all the ingredients inside the bowl have to be real.
Another example is in episode four. My rehab took place in 2009, and chemsex at the time didn’t exist, or it didn’t have a name. The show takes place in 2018, so there’s a chemsex addict in that episode. That didn’t take place, because at the time it wasn’t there. We didn’t have chemsex addicts. Now there are, so where’s the boundary there? There are several real people the character is based on.
After creating distance to the fictional Javi while writing the scripts, how did you and Pla work together to create an intimate portrait of the character we see on screen?
We spent a year rehearsing, which is unheard of. A great part of this work wasn’t so much the rehearsals themselves – classic rehearsals with the script, which we also did. Much of it was turning into brothers, siblings. I opened up my life for him and he came in. He opened his life and I came in. Today we’re like brothers. There’s no one in the world who knows me better than him and there’s no one who knows him better than me.
From the beginning, I told him, ‘I don’t want you to mimic me. I’m not a public figure or a celebrity. People don’t know how I move or talk or whatever.’ From the start, in an organic way, we talked about Javi as a standalone character, which enabled a distance for me to direct him and for him to be able to play the character, thus eliminating this load that comes with that of trying to honour the [real] person, which is quite a load.
What I told him from the beginning was the person on screen has to be some kind of son we would have together. What I meant was it’s my pain and it’s my intimacy, my privacy; my guts are there, but his guts have to be there too. Otherwise it won’t be meaningful or believable enough. I was blessed with an actor that, as a tool, he’s the best of instruments, perfectly tuned. But not only that, he’s an extremely generous actor and when I said we were taking a leap of faith, he did it with me.
Sometimes I told him we were like two tightrope walkers – so when you lose balance, I will help you and the other way around. It was such an intimate, humane work and it went way beyond a professional relationship of actor-director. It was very intuitive.
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Dopesick: A series about the opioid crisis in the US and its impact on individuals, families and communities.
Nurse Jackie: This darkly comic series centres on a nurse battling opioid addiction while trying to maintain her professional and personal life.
Breaking Bad: The mega-hit crime drama explores addiction through character Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul) and the broader impact of methamphetamine production and abuse.
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tagged in: Alea, Disney, I Addict, Javier Giner, Oriol Pla, Yo Adicto