Isabelle lightwood and addiction part 4 - Shadowhunter's.
I have to be honest with my readers that in this post I have struggled with it as in a previous life I worked in a pharmacy that had a methadone program. Some of the stories I heard during that time are heartbreaking. (I also have a smartphone addiction that I am working on.)
However, this is going to focus on Izzy (Isabelle) Lightwood being stable and how someone in reality that has a chemical addiction can get help. As addiction can take many forms including but isn't limited to illegal drugs and alcohol. (let's talk about Magnus in another post 😉)
These clips focus on Izzy in season two where she is mostly in the recovery stage, from a Yen Fen addiction a substance that is akin to opioids in the additional sense that it was prescribed for her and she got addicted to it and started to seek it out leading to her having a co-dependent relationship with Raphaelle that was dependent on her for both of them getting high, Izzy off vampire venom and Raphaelle off shadow hunter blood.
Because of the addiction, she had typical addiction behaviors of denial, anger, bargaining, and then seeking it out from the source as she was thinking about her next fix she was a high-functioning addict and she was able to dry out with some help but I have another post on that. However in her addiction behaviors, we see that she isn't used to being in a position where she has power over the people that had power over her, we see that this is just a family it's an organization as well and so this is where she and Alec are calling out unacceptable behavior. As Alec is the only one who at this stage knows that she is an addict and who got her addicted to the substance in the first place and this is something that we need to be aware of that people need to be aware of the effects of medications some that are prescribed can be just as dangerous as illegal medications as well.
So for her but not used she is seeking honesty and accountability from the people who have created the environment and circumstances that lead to her addiction. We have seen in the first season that even as young adults they see that their parents are away a lot and Alec is acting as head of the institute a lot of the time. He also relies on Izzy and Jace however when Clary comes in his plans are derailed.
This clip in particular focuses on the responsibility she has been focusing on. One of the fundamentals of recovery and stabilization. Is to keep yourself busy and focus on what you can control in your life. So this is her duty at work, training her little brother that has a massive lot of potential. However, she sees that the family needs to confront what is going on in their personal life, deal with the dysfunction, and move beyond it as Clary has become a more stable fixture in their lives and they have started to care for her and Alec has to respect her as Jaces girlfriend
We see her call her Father out for his poor behavior toward Max. So she is not only taking accountability for herself but for the others in her family. That she is responsible for or cares about and we see an honest and vulnerable moment between her Father and later Alec as through his bond with Jace he can sense something is wrong Clary has unusual abilities and still being new to the Shadow World. Still acts on her impulses without telling people. Izzy is also enforcing her boundaries with her father as a daughter as they had very rigid boundaries. Alec, now can express his emotions more he can be an Emotionally safe space and we see that they regard the training room as a safe space to talk and train.
In this clip, we see that she is physically strong stable, and competent in how she is working and they are working as a team Good as we see that this is a direct tribute to the books where the are some New York Shadowhunters that turn evil and they where coined team evil against a team good. Confronting those who seek to do her harm this is Jonathan her actual brother, not Jace.
So in the books, we see an alternative universe, not one that is peaceful but one that is a world where Valentine won and he has taken the shadow world over and there is a lot of forsaken and this world is called Thule and it's a very violent world and we see that this world the shadow hunters don't have to hide from mundane as they do in the show it's seen that valentine in the Thule is even eviler than the show valentine and we see that this adds to the conversation that is it the person or the circumstance that makes them evil. Or is it devotion to a cause? As we see that Valentine is very devoted to the shadow hunters and is very much stuck in old school thinking that the shadow hunters are above worlders but they have the accords and we see that he thinks nothing of them as they did nothing to protect him and he wants to protect the shadow world.
However, we do see and I have written about this we see that people did agree with him but he essentially went insane and this is why Josyln took clary out of this world as it wasn't safe as he wants the perfect shadow hunter and this is why he experimented on Josyln and other subjects without there consent very reminiscent of the eugenics movement and in his line of thinking of purity of blood there are some very chilling parallels that I have written about in the post about the clave and the changing of the guard and the links to real-world evil. As we see that the circle members that weren't punished were able to hide and we see that the highest member of the shadow hunters' organization the clave is a member of the circle and we see that they aren't aware of this and undermine the class attempt to get the cup as they are aiding valentine. This is similar to having legacy media have a coordinated attack on news events and not covering others but the internet is starting to change this as well.
We see in this clip that Izzy sees what needs to be done and this is a great character progression of her forcing Alec to confront his personal issues, as she sees him going down the same track of avoidance of his personal issues. So this is her simply doing what needs to be done, Due to the demons that are attacking the realm due to the rift being open. We also see that the circle members are still in high places and are undermining the attempts to stop Valentine.
We also see Izzy navigating the social aspect of the workplace as well as becoming respectable again and earning the admiration of others in the shadow world. As she is being honest and open about what she has done and exposing the lies and the dysfunction in the family we see that this opens up options for healing for everyone and this is a massive part of her recovery.
So she can be stable in a way that we see not many people can achieve.
Reading for this post
The Importance Of Maintaining Healthy Family Relationships (marriage.com)Infidelity And How It Affects Marriage, Children And Families - Diane Rehm
The Impact of Extramarital Affairs on Family Members (oureverydaylife.com)
Personal boundaries - Wikipedia
Fight-or-flight response - Wikipedia
Behavioral contagion - Wikipedia
Social facilitation - Wikipedia -
Social contagion - Wikipedia -
Respectability politics - Wikipedia
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