19 he/they this blog is dedicated to my thoughts and feelings re: gender and sexuality sometimes just general thoughts and feelings too also suddenly I post about the pitt on here too I guess 💉12/31/25💉
“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ‘70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”
— Johann Hari, Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?
"Robby was being so unprofessional and threw Langdon off his game"
Dr. Langdon is an addict who stole medication from his patients. I say this not to devalue his recovery, or put any kind of shame on being an addict, but to put the situation in perspective.
I know addicts, and I know them quite well. Addiction changes your brain chemistry. Not only with substances. It changes your behavior. It is especially apparent in stressful situations, which is the job description of the ED.
"It will never happen again" isn't something that should be dismissed, but it isn't something you put blind faith in either. It is unrealistic. I have seen people relapse years into recovery. Good people. They've died.
Anyone who is overly offended by "I'm glad you got the help you needed, but I'm not sure I want you working in my ER" has clearly never loved an addict. ESPECIALLY not one so fresh from getting clean. I am willing to bet that Robby knows his way around addicts, judging from his response to the whole situation. Robby trusted Langdon, but that trust has fundamentally changed, and still needs to be rebuilt over a long time.
Was it dickish to banish Langdon to triage, and grill him when he was in Trauma? Yeah. But Robby is a character with depth. Saddling Langdon with triage duty was avoidance of a conversation he himself said he didn't want to have. Grilling him after their roof exchange was a way to say prove it. Langdon was very reasonably rattled, and it wasn't a good time, but that doesn't make Robby evil. It makes him a person who has been betrayed, and is not having The Perfect Response to it. Robby has, again and again, displayed being not great at dealing with personal troubles, but all of a sudden it's different when he's being hard on Dr. Dreamboat who went to rehab so everything is fine and okay now.
He's working hard to change the cycle, but that does not absolve him of the effects of his addiction. Robby is not just being a dick who doesn't appreciate Langdon's work on his recovery, Robby is being a person who has not only had his trust betrayed, but has seemingly played this game before.
He was being honest, which is better than platitudes and blind forgiveness. Trust me.
Not only is it unrealistic for Robby to trust Langdon,
It is actively dangerous.
Much more under the cut!! Langdon lovers please hear me out!!!
TW for discussion of clean dates and relapse
He put patients at risk, and is only 5 months clean. Five months is an achievement to be proud of, absolutely. I would like to reiterate, though: I have seen people with loving families and support relapse after almost a decade and die.
Also, I have seen people reduce it to "I don't want you working in my ER" which is NOT what was said. The words "not sure" matter A LOT. He is expressing that no, he doesn't trust Langdon anymore, but he is still willing to give him a chance. To me, it is Robby's way of saying that if Langdon wants to stay, he needs to prove his trustworthiness. Robby's immediate scrutiny was not helpful, and quite bitchy, but he also only has so much time to evaluate if Langdon can handle being back in the Pitt.
Other people were quicker to accept his apology. This is because they are not directly responsible for him. Langdon was only able to get away with what he was doing because Robby trusted him enough to let him work without oversight. This has immense bearing on the way that Robby reacted.
Accepting an addict's rushed apology outright and believing fully that it won't happen again is not a wise decision. When the stakes are as high as they are in an emergency room, it doesn't just affect the personal relationship, it affects the life and death of other people.
Addicts want to escape. Langdon wanted to escape withdrawal by stealing medication. Langdon wanted to escape the guilt and tension between him and Robby. He chose to start a conversation Robby told him he didn't want to have (which is not a great thing for Robby to do either, but as I said earlier, he knew himself well enough to put distance between them so it didn't affect their practice.)
When denied the escape, addicts panic. When Langdon realized he no longer had his escape through drugs, he panicked and became aggressive. When Langdon was denied the escape from the discomfort of what he'd done, he panicked and forgot what to do. The fault lies with neither of them, but with the nature of addiction. And also maybe Al-Hashim a little bit for making assumptions.
Robby tried to avoid the conflict between them having an effect on patients by putting him in triage (also an attempt at avoidance of Personal Problems, as mentioned earlier, probably a little bit of punishment, making him earn his way back cause Robby wants to see him prove himself) but Al-Hashim called him back. When they were put together, Langdon forced a response from Mr. Maladjusted. It went poorly. Both of them were unprepared to truly go into that conversation. In fact, the timing essentially denied them the opportunity for an actual conversation.
All in all, I think this is good writing. It reflects the way addicts think and act, and the way that those close to them can react. These are both complex characters and arcs. Reducing it to "Dr. Robby is being mean" or "Langdon just shouldn't have stolen drugs" does a disservice to the show. My intent here is not to say that Robby's behavior is totally fine, but to shed some light on a perspective that many people don't have. It's a really interesting and well written part of the show, and I want people to be able to appreciate it. But ah, what can ya do. People on the internet love flattening characters.
I have a longer post cooking up on this but oh my GODDDD Robby did NOT say "I don't want you in my ER" that is NOT what he said. Even people who are trying to explain about it are getting it wrong ffs. It was written specifically "I'm not sure" for a REASONNNUHGHH you people drive me insane
"Robby was being so unprofessional and threw Langdon off his game"
Dr. Langdon is an addict who stole medication from his patients. I say this not to devalue his recovery, or put any kind of shame on being an addict, but to put the situation in perspective.
I know addicts, and I know them quite well. Addiction changes your brain chemistry. Not only with substances. It changes your behavior. It is especially apparent in stressful situations, which is the job description of the ED.
"It will never happen again" isn't something that should be dismissed, but it isn't something you put blind faith in either. It is unrealistic. I have seen people relapse years into recovery. Good people. They've died.
Anyone who is overly offended by "I'm glad you got the help you needed, but I'm not sure I want you working in my ER" has clearly never loved an addict. ESPECIALLY not one so fresh from getting clean. I am willing to bet that Robby knows his way around addicts, judging from his response to the whole situation. Robby trusted Langdon, but that trust has fundamentally changed, and still needs to be rebuilt over a long time.
Was it dickish to banish Langdon to triage, and grill him when he was in Trauma? Yeah. But Robby is a character with depth. Saddling Langdon with triage duty was avoidance of a conversation he himself said he didn't want to have. Grilling him after their roof exchange was a way to say prove it. Langdon was very reasonably rattled, and it wasn't a good time, but that doesn't make Robby evil. It makes him a person who has been betrayed, and is not having The Perfect Response to it. Robby has, again and again, displayed being not great at dealing with personal troubles, but all of a sudden it's different when he's being hard on Dr. Dreamboat who went to rehab so everything is fine and okay now.
He's working hard to change the cycle, but that does not absolve him of the effects of his addiction. Robby is not just being a dick who doesn't appreciate Langdon's work on his recovery, Robby is being a person who has not only had his trust betrayed, but has seemingly played this game before.
He was being honest, which is better than platitudes and blind forgiveness. Trust me.