I have to say, the handling of addiction and recovery on Babylon 5 sometimes jumps out at me.
The beginning of Shadow Dancing, Stephen Franklin has been walkabout for days now, and we see Zach Allan talking to Garibaldi about it. And you know both of these guys know what it's like.
And Garibaldi feels like maybe he didn't handle it right, with confronting Stephen about his addiction to stims, and maybe he should have followed him, gone with him, instead of letting him walk away. And you and I know, there was no way for that to work. And maybe Garibaldi technically knows it, but in his gut, it's personal. You don't want your friend to have to hit rock bottom. You don't want your friend to have to go it alone. Garibaldi, in addition to being an asshole, is a compulsive fixer.
But they're having a little meeting here, Michael and Zach, and no matter what Zach feels about the weird details of Stephen's quest to turn his life over to his higher power, he knows it's part of the process. You can't shortcut recovery for someone.
He admitted he was powerless over the stims, and that his life had become unmanageable.
He came to believe that a power greater than himself could restore him to sanity.
He made a decision to turn his will and his life over to this higher power as he understood it.
He made a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself.
He admitted to himself, to his higher power, and to Garibaldi the exact nature of his wrongs.
As a Foundationalist it's not like Franklin believes in God, but he was entirely willing to be rid of his defects of character ...
... and humbly went about the standard process for removing those shortcomings.
Now, we don't know about his list of people he has harmed or his amends to them, but we do know that when he does come back, he is committed to a better way of dealing with his life, which probably involves the usual continued inventory and willingness to admit wrong and make amends. The 12-step program is built into the plot, recognizably and yet without lampshading it.
And so Zach, and JMS for that matter, is reminding us: it's OK if someone is going on their process of recovery, and you're not part of it right now. The point of recovery is not that you can save people. It's that no matter what has happened, you can get better. And so can they.
"Look: he's gotta get his head screwed on straight. You can't do that for him."
And on we go into the episode.
