Documentary
2021 Canada
80 minutes
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Director: Michelle Melles
Website: https://drunkontoomuchlife.com/
Short synopsis from the Drunk On Too Much Life webside
In a world gone crazy, a young woman discovers that her madness is a fierce and powerful gift that makes her more fully human. Drunk on Too Much Life is an intimate and powerful documentary following the filmmaker’s 21-year-old daughter’s mind-opening journey from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels towards expansive worlds of creativity, connection and greater meaning. On their journey, the family begins to question the widespread idea that mental illness should be understood in purely biological terms and learns the myriad ways that madness has meaning. Recovery is not a straight path to being cured but a crooked and bumpy journey and series of small awakenings.
Summary
In this documentary, we follow Corrina, a young woman from Toronto, as she navigates psychotic episodes and profound mental health challenges. Her story unfolds as a journey towards greater self-awareness and awakening, interweaving encounters with activists, conversations with family members, and archival footage from different moments in her young life. Along the way, Corrina interviews trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté and others such as American activist Sascha DuBrul, who offer alternative, resource-oriented perspectives on unusual and extreme sensory experiences. Within the film, her path also includes multiple hospitalizations and medication treatments within the traditional biomedical system, creating a contrast between conventional psychiatry and trauma-informed, peer-based approaches to those labelled with “serious mental illness.”
Corrina’s parents, who are also the filmmakers, accompany their daughter’s journey with openness and curiosity, gradually encountering deeper spiritual and creative meanings her extreme states bring to the surface. It is Corrina’s grandmother who first offers another way of understanding what is happening to the young girl, encouraging her to give voice to her inner world through poetry and art. “You have an artistic temperament,” she tells her—words that resonate deeply with Corrina.
Tracing Corrina’s difficult passage through repeated hospitalizations, numerous medications, and her own ongoing search for meaning, Corrina finds refuge in art, poetry, music, and community. Slowly, Corrina begins to recognize herself as a deeply sensitive and creative person—someone who perceives layers of meaning and feeling that others may overlook.
What was once called illness begins to reveal itself as something more complex: a heightened sensitivity that carries vulnerability and insight, pain and possibility. Through Corrina’s personal journey, the film invites us to reconsider how our culture understands complex ‘mental illness’, and to ask whether the very qualities we often pathologize may also hold the seeds of creativity, perception, and transformation.