[ti]butterfly2[/ti]Maniac on Netflix - watch it

Now watch me UUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
Now watch me UUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
Now watch me UUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

I watched this.

The drugs are called pills “A” “B” and “C”.

Essentially they are a metaphor for heavy psychedelics like mushrooms, LSD, or DMT.

The story follows two main characters: Jonas Hill and Emma Stone. Jonah Hill is a schizo who believes he is the One who will save the world. He sees things that aren’t there and believes the universe is guiding him with patterns and messages in the world around him. His family is forcing him to lie in court in order to protect his older brother, which he does not want to do but they are holding the threat of being committed to a mental health facility over his head. He joins an experimental study which is supposed to cure all forms of mental illness and be the end of therapy once and for all.

Emma Stone is a drug addict who runs out of drugs. She joins the experimental study because the drug they are testing on people, the “A” pill, is the drug she is addicted to. She blackmails and lies her way into the study and we learn she is kind of a jerk who only cares about herself.

We find out drug “A” makes people basically trip out and re-live their deepest, worst trauma. This is why Emma Stone is addicted to the drug. She is reliving her worst moment over and over again. Her worst moment was a trip she took with her sister. She was very cruel to her sister the whole time because her sister was moving away and Emma Stone loves her a lot but doesn’t really know how to say “I’m going to miss you”. So instead she is just an asshole to her sister and says cruel things like “I can’t wait until you’re out of my life and we drift apart.” They get into a car wreck and her sister dies. Emma Stone is taking the drug over and over again just to see her dead sister again, even if it means experiencing the awfulness of being cruel to her and of course her death.

The show reall gets interesting when the patients take pill “B”, which is supposed to map out their minds and defense mechanisms. The patients experience it as a series of wild and bizarre dreams that happen all at once which all lead to shine light on their psychological states and the map of their minds. Emma Stone and Jonah Hill get stuck tripping out together, and go through a series of dreams where they are a married couple in the 80s, thieves, in the mafia, all sorts of crazy things, but each scenario making sense for the characters, being some sort of exaggerated metaphor for their lives.

Pill “C” is confrontation where they are forced to confront their inner demons and all of their trauma in order to move past it.

I don’t remember the pill being called “ULP” as there are actually three pills they take but maybe I missed it. Seemed to be more about the therapeutic effects of tripping and confronting your traumas in order to grow and be healthy again.

It was fantastic