Sean Daniels, writer of The White Chip
"It’s important to have silly songs about recovery. It’s important to show there’s a lot of joy. There’s a vast world that wasn’t there before on the other side."
Here Sean Daniels speaks to Alex Mazonowicz about how art can help change narratives, how the media stigmatises those in recovery and the motivation behind his play, the White Chip.
Sean is a writer, director and recovery advocate. He is the anti-stigma director for Live Tampa Bay, and founded The Recovery Project, which is a Florida-based organisation that uses the arts to battle the stigma around addiction and advocate for those in recovery. He is the writer of The White Chip, a semi-autographical play based on Sean’s own experience of sobriety. Here he speaks to Alex Mazonowicz about how art can help change narratives, how the media stigmatises those in recovery and the motivation behind his play.
Alex Mazonowicz is the editor and a founder board member of Performing Recovery.
This interview was first published in Performing Recovery Issue 8 in September 2024. You can read it for free at https://recovery-arts.org/pr-magazine/issue-8/, or order a print copy of the magazine at https://performing-recovery.sumupstore.com/
You can hear this interview as a podcast on our Patreon.
Alex What was the idea behind The Recovery Project?
Sean: Live Tampa Bay is a Florida-based health and human services organisation focussed on improving outcomes for people in addiction. I’m currently doing anti-stigma work for them, and they’re also great at letting me grow The Recovery Project. The idea is to try to use the arts to battle addiction. During the pandemic, there were studies on how national narratives change in the US. When Barack Obama ran for US president in 2008, he was against gay marriage. But in 2024, you can’t be a Democrat, even in a red state, and be against gay marriage. We do change how we think about things in our lifetime.
These studies said the main factor impacting this was the arts. It was the books you read, the TV you watched, movies and plays. The Normal Heart played on Broadway and changed the conversation. I thought, ‘How do we do the same thing for addiction? How do we do the same for this thing that in the US has been acknowledged as a disease since the late 50s, and yet we don’t talk about it the same way?’
We don’t talk about it in the same way as diabetes, HIV or other diseases that can follow similar paths. The idea behind The Recovery Project is to figure out how we can use the arts to battle addiction. I have so many artist friends lost to addiction that I just feel like we have to do better as a community. We have union rules to make sure that the wrong kind of smoke on stage doesn’t get near actors, and we regulate when breaks are. But when it comes to ensuring that you have the right resources to take care of yourself when you’re out of town, we fall short.
For artists in the US, whether you have insurance or not is tied to the number of weeks you work, which creates a trap for people who might need to take time off to get help. There are some large structural issues. I want to help artists, but also, artists are the key to changing this conversation.
Alex Live Tampa Bay put out that fantastic video about supporting recovery in the workplace. It has that amazing song I can’t get out of my head. What’s the thought behind that?
Sean: I’ve only watched it approximately a thousand times myself! Because it is very catchy. In a similar way, we’re doing a baseball event soon. It’s a big deal for a US sports team to have a recovery night.
We don’t have a lot of joyful things around recovery. We don’t have silly recovery songs – we focus on the negative things like not relapsing. It can feel like you’ve lost a significant portion of your life to get sober. I feared that I was going to be boring. Who was I going to be? It’s important to have silly songs about recovery. It’s important to show there’s a lot of joy. There’s a vast world that wasn’t there before on the other side.
"Part of why I focus on anti-stigma is that we have to be open and talk about it so people know where to get the resources that they need."
Alex That strikes a chord for people in recovery. I was surprised at the laughter in my first AA meeting. I thought, ‘What are you laughing at?’
Sean: That’s right! It’s part of why my play The White Chip is a comedy. I went to these AA meetings, and I was terrified. First of all, I was terrified that somebody would find out I was an alcoholic because I was there, even though they were all there for the exact same reason – I was just worried about getting busted. But people were just laughing!
At every meeting I’ve gone to, people tell these horrible stories of, for instance, the time they got arrested stealing a helicopter, and the room just roars with laughter! That type of joy is not represented at all in modern media. If you see an AA meeting in a TV show or a movie, it’s six weird people in a church basement who are going to chant your name at you. And your hands will just always be shaky, but you just have to go through it. It’s kind of a punchline.
I want to show there is a whole level of joy and camaraderie in recovery that is not being represented. I feel like humour has to be a part of it. I grew up in a time in the US when we had these after-school special TV episodes that would deal with addiction. Some light music would play, and a character you didn’t know that well would admit they had a problem. It’s so deeply othering to say that it’s a problem that happens, as opposed to any other disease. Like other diseases, it’s a mix of genetics and circumstances and choices, but once you have it, you can then make choices to be able to get better.
Alex In the UK, we had Grange Hill, which was set in a secondary school, and it had a character who became a heroin addict and died. It didn’t feel realistic. It didn’t feel like addiction in the way I know it now.
Sean: Because of TV shows like that, people see those struggling as bums under overpasses. We even self-stigmatise by saying that if we’re not that, we don’t have a problem yet. If you can keep a job, go to work, be successful and be in a relationship, you’re not those people we saw on TV, which is one step away from death. Maybe you don’t get help.
But with diabetes, for instance. There’s a thing called “pre-diabetic”, which means that a doctor will tell you because of your genetics or maybe choices that you’ve made, if you continue on the path that you’re on, you will develop diabetes. Then you can decide what changes you’d like to make. Even if you develop diabetes, they don’t wait till you’ve lost a leg before you start treatment. That’s because diabetes isn’t seen as a moral failing. You could have made some different choices, but then maybe not. The question is, “How do we remove the stigma?”
Alex I watched the first episode of the TV show Succession, and a lead character talked about being in a 12-step group. At first, I thought, “Wow, this is somebody I can relate to.” Then I realised that he was being set up to fail.
Sean: The only reason you ever see people in a TV show in recovery is to be able to have a relapse at some point. For instance, at the end of season one, they’re going to grab a drink, and then it all falls apart. In the US, 26 million Americans are living in recovery, and they’re not represented with characters in TV shows when it’s not about their recovery. Many of us go through the day, and it affects who we are, but not every choice that we make is about the trauma of our past. We want to represent that in a way that feels authentic to everyone in recovery who is out there living their full lives.
"In recovery, I’ve found the next artistic level – putting on shows for people who have never seen themselves or their stories represented on stage."
Alex What’s the background behind writing The White Chip?
Sean: When I was in rehab, I started to do some writing to try to figure out how I had gotten there. I’d been so career-driven and determined, yet somehow I had screwed it all up. I was able to get sober because I found a group of men who talked me through the science of addiction, such as dopamine and neural pathways. I’d never heard any of that. I decided to write what I couldn’t find – something science-based but also something humorous and entertaining that I would want to go and see. Something that isn’t written in old 1920s language by some guys in Ohio is supposed to work for all of us.
I’ve been very lucky along the way to have had people continually contribute to the play. Tony Award-winning Broadway producer Tom Kirdahy came on the project early and helped shape it. Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, Jason Biggs and John Larroquette lent their names to running it in New York, Off-Broadway.
Whenever we do the show, I’m slightly terrified because I feel like the audience is once again going to discover that I’m an alcoholic! Even though I’ve spent a decade writing it and convincing people to put it on, I still carry some of that shame. Yet, an amazing thing happened on the play’s most recent run. After every performance, somebody would come up to us and say, “Okay, I’m ready to get help.”
The producers have put together 12 different QR codes to help you find places to get help based on the type of group you need. Someone came to the very first preview and said, “I’m not sober, but I’m an alcoholic.” After 2 weeks, they messaged us again to say, “I have 2 weeks as of today.”
When I was 20, I thought that we were going to change the world by doing theatre. The most punk rock thing was to put on plays. And everybody said, “You’ll never make any money.” But it didn’t matter because we were going to change the world – then, along the way, we lost that. But with this play, once again, we feel we are really doing the most punk rock thing that we can – show that recovery is possible and can be joyful and help people connect. Danielle Tarento, who is an amazing producer, flew over and came to the opening night, and she decided to bring it to London.
Alex For the Live Tampa Bay Project, what are the other main activities?
Sean: The main thing I focus on is the overall stigma, which stops people from getting help. We have a programme in which we work with the Terrence McNally Foundation to commission writers to write plays featuring people in recovery or some recovery-friendly content. There are other parts of Live Tampa Bay and other organisations that are fantastic at getting people the help they need. They have programmes that ensure that law enforcement has Narcan with them or that Uber will cover the costs of people who want to get treatment. But none of that matters if we don’t talk about it and people don’t know how to access these resources.
In every town, there is respite housing, fantastic AA groups and people with long-term sobriety who are just around the corner from you. But if we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t matter. What happens if a friend is struggling? Just going to Google isn’t a cohesive plan for how we get together.
In the US, if you have cancer, you go to the American Cancer Society, and they will send you right to the right place. If you have Parkinson’s, you go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and they will connect you to resources that are in your town. If you have addiction, which kills somebody in the US every 3 minutes, you hope you know somebody who kind of knows somebody. That’s the best system that we have in 2024.
Part of why I focus on anti-stigma is that we have to talk about recovery so people know where to get the resources they need. We have an event at the end of September to honour Hank Azaria. He came forward and wrote this great op-ed about recovery in The New York Times. We need more people to come forward saying, “I’m sober, I’m incredibly talented, funny and a millionaire!” You need to know that success is possible. It’s not simply that you’ll not die and have shaky hands for the rest of your life.
Alex I think that’s right. But when you’re working in communities or in companies, there are a lot of very difficult conversations that a lot of people don’t want to have.
Sean: We put together this recovery-friendly workplace video for performing arts organisations because I think you’re right, nobody is trained in terms of how you handle it as a manager. Can you fire people? Can you not fire people?
Around 60–70% of people held a job down in the year leading up to their overdose. That means there was an opportunity to intervene when they were at work. I promise you, somebody they worked with thought they seemed off, but they didn’t know if they could or should say something. Part of creating recovery-friendly workplaces is putting together tools for employers because they don’t know how to handle it.
I don’t know about you, but I lied until I couldn’t lie anymore about the fact that I had a problem. What do you do with the disease at work when people don’t want to bring it up because they think they’ll get fired if they talk about it?
We’re currently testing a “warm line” for artists. Nobody wants to go to their boss and say, “I’ve been on cocaine for the last 2 weeks,” right? Nobody takes that well. With warm lines, you can talk to someone in your industry who can show you how to get help or offer advice. Somebody who understands the idiosyncratic nature of whatever field that you’re in. There are already lines for airline pilots, doctors and lawyers. A lot of lawyer friends say it’s saved their lives because they didn’t want to go to their boss and say, “I have a cocaine problem,” but they’re happy to talk to another lawyer and say, “Right, what do I do?”
Many people don’t want to come forward – but then, what do you do? You just suck it up and hope that you’ll get better, and that doesn’t work. You can see why people bottom out when they could have got help 6 months earlier. We’re all taught to just figure it out on our own.
"I decided to write what I couldn’t find – something science-based but also something humorous and entertaining that I would want to go and see."
Alex How has art played a part in your own recovery?
Sean: I’ve always worked in the arts, especially in theatre. It’s always been when I feel the closest to who I am and connected to other people. We did a reading of The White Chip at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and I love them for this, but they served beer at the reading! Still, afterwards, a woman raised her hand and wanted to talk because she had lost her son, and she didn’t understand why. She had come to the play in the hope that she would understand. A dad had brought his family because he wanted them to understand him better.
As an artist, I’m doing what I always thought I would: creating work that brings people closer together. I have a sister-in-law who lost her father to addiction. After she read the play, she gave me the nicest compliment everyone’s ever given me. She said, “I think I hate my father a little less after reading that.” What if every piece of art made us hate somebody else a little bit less? Couldn’t that be the goal of creating all this work we do?
I love putting on shows, and I love an audience laughing – it’s my favourite thing. Actually, half an audience laughing is my favourite thing because it means half of them got the joke. But in recovery, I’ve found the next artistic level, which is putting on shows for people who have never seen themselves or their stories represented on stage.
We know what it’s like when you finally see your story, whether it’s in song or on stage and how less alone we feel in that moment. I love how art can provide that, especially in 2024, when it feels like the world is on fire at any given moment. Doing work that brings people closer together is very satisfying.
Alex There’s also the community aspect.
Sean: Regardless of what you think about AA, people go to meetings of strangers, they tell their stories, and a significant portion of them don’t die. I really believe it’s because the opposite of addiction isn’t abstinence; it’s community. Every addict I’ve ever talked to, when they were at their worst, had shrunk their circle of people tightly to make sure that the people that were in it wouldn’t give them a hard time for what they were doing – sometimes that meant nobody but themselves.
The second you announce that you have cancer, the community is there for you. There are support groups, people run marathons and people bake. But for us addicts, even if you announce you’re getting help, a lot of people pull back because they think it’s a moral failing and that you’ve gotten yourself into this position, which we know is definitely false.
Alex What advice would you give to somebody in recovery who wanted to start writing or doing an artistic project?
Sean: You just have to start. The hardest part of writing is starting. You’ve got to get words down on pages – and it’s going to be bad. Everybody’s first draft is terrible. But what I love about writing is that you can do it any time. I feel everybody should be writing, especially in recovery, because we need a thousand more stories out there.
I’m glad for all the support that The White Chip has received, but I think part of why it’s gotten so much support is that there aren’t many shows like it. That’s not good because my perspective on it is just one perspective. There are different genders, races and other stories that need to be told about what it is to navigate addiction from different points of view.
There’s a playwright, Jake Brasch, who is a phenomenally bold writer. He’s writing about the queer sober experience. It was announced yesterday that he’s getting the Terrence McNally Foundation commission. Terrence is one of the great American playwrights of all time. One of the things people don’t talk about with him is that he wrote his best work after getting sober. He is rightfully championed for coming out as gay at a time when it was not cool for playwrights to come out. He should get all the recognition for that. But he was also sober at a time when that was not cool. We need to celebrate more writers like that because every person who is loud like that lets somebody else know they don’t need to suffer in the shadows.
You can find out more about The Recovery Project here: www.floridastudiotheatre.org/
…and Live Tampa Bay here: livetampabay.org
