Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Xochitl Weiss
Mrs. Reed
30 October 2016
Paul Sheldon, the main character in Misery by Stephen King, goes through several
traumatic events that play a significant role in the deterioration of his mental health and
contribute to his addiction issues. He goes through a kidnapping from a psychotic fan, named
Annie Wilkes, after he gets in a car accident that leaves him with severe injuries, deals with her
abuse and has to murder her to survive. While Paul is trapped at Annies house she gives him
pain medicine that starts his addiction. Even after being saved, Paul continues his addiction and
shows clear signs of mental issues. Paul Sheldon is a prime example that traumatic events have a
detrimental effect on peoples mental health and increase their likelihood of having a dependency
on drugs or alcohol.
Many people suffer from depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder after
going through life altering events that are too emotionally or physically painful for them to
handle. Towards the end of Misery, after Paul is saved by the police officer, his behavior displays
clear signs of depression and a few of the symptoms of PTSD resulting from his traumatic
experiences. Paul constantly cries, suffers from horrible nightmares that make him relive
everything he went through and becomes depressed. Despite not being able to correctly mentally
process what happened to him and having horrible thoughts from his depression, Paul decides
not to seek help from a therapist even though he was drinking too much and not writing at all
proving that his symptoms are severe enough to impact his daily life and prevent him from
Weiss 2
working (King 343). Instead of going to a professional and learning the healthy way to deal with
his negative thoughts and the internal torture from the memories of his kidnapping, Paul, like
Paul Sheldon uses drugs and alcohol to relieve the physical and mental pain he feels from
the trauma which is shown, by research, to be a common form of self-medication used by people
who experience traumatic events. First Paul becomes addicted to pain medicine while he is
kidnapped and after Paul is saved he relies heavily on alcohol to temporarily forget the memories
that plague his life. He, like many other people who have experienced traumatic events, feels that
and Drug Addiction). Alcohol becomes his coping mechanism instead of getting treatment for
the underlying cause of his pain from a therapist. By the end of the novel, Paul becomes
desperate to get the good dope that is his never-fail fix when his addiction had progressed
with his depression (King 345). Many people, who have experienced devastating life events, also
do not get the help they need and turn to self medication. A direct correlation between substance
abuse and traumatic events has been proven by studies in the past. In fact, a recent study, by the
Department of Veteran Affairs, on a sample group of 5,338 people, who have PTSD, reported
that 44% met criteria for alcohol abuse/dependence and 22% for drug abuse/dependence
(Meisler). Treatment can be difficult and expensive and is not something people like Paul should
after they experience traumatic events. The stress and mental torture he goes through is
especially evident towards the end of the story and causes the readers to make the connection
that he is depressed, an alcoholic and needs treatment he is not going to get. This aspect of the
Weiss 3
story relates to people who have real life traumatic events and how those events impact their
lives and their mental health for years after they go through them. King uses Paul as an example
of what unfortunately happens in many cases where people go through traumatic events.