SPOILER ALERT
You may or may not have watched euphoria (MAX), the hit show about a group of teenagers in East Highland, California as they navigate trauma, addiction, and love. It’s the most popular show on MAX, I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s trying to find a new comfort show to binge.
But is euphoria realistic to a real teenage lifestyle?
Yes and no. The show gets a lot of things right: mental health, relationship drama, the language, and the parties.
The main character Rue (Zendaya) is a teenage drug addict struggling with sobriety. Rue grows up struggling with OCD, anxiety, depression, and ADHD. She also shows strong symptoms of bipolar disorder. Rue lost her father at a young age, causing her to spiral, make irrational decisions, and get into drug use.
The mental health aspects the show presents are very common, but from my experience these past four years of high school, the hard drug use is rare to see. Smoking and vaping are common, and a lot of teens do struggle with addiction. There are multiple altercations in the show that also happen in real life to people struggling with drug withdrawal.
The drama in this show is insane: everything that happens in the show does happen in real life, but it can be definitely overblown at times. I’m sure we’ve all experienced some sort of high school drama along the way. For example, a girl liking her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, just like Maddie (Alexa Demie) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeny) in the show. Maddie is abused by Nate (Jacob Elordi). Cassie is there for her throughout everything Nate does. Maddie stops being friends with Cassie after she finds out about their relationship. There are fights and crazy entertaining drama, like Rue running away from her family and the cops, then showing up to Maddie’s birthday and snitching on Cassie.
One character in the show, Lexi (Maude Apatow), Cassie’s younger sister, directs a high school play called “Our Life.” The play is about Lexi’s life and the trauma she’s witnessed around her, showing Cassie’s failed romantic relationships, Rue’s addiction, and a comedy section on Nate’s toxic masculinity. The play allows Lexi to step out of the shadows, and control her own narrative. She touches on a lot of sensitive topics, and though Lexi creates fake names for everyone, it still embarrasses her friends and causes a crashout on the stage, which escalates to a fight. The play showed more adult content than is realistic; Nate’s section in the play had sexual content and was inappropriate. No school would allow that play to actually happen – especially Skyline.
euphoria uses the same realistic language teens use. I’m sure we’re all aware of those tv shows/movies that try to be gen z and get it all wrong then end up making it cringe. This is not that. euphoria uses heavy adult language. The show does not speak brainrot. euphoria just expresses our generation in the most realistic way.
The show isn’t perfectly realistic: the characters actually use lockers. Realistically no one in high school uses the lockers to store all their books. No student actually has the time to transfer books during the five-minute passing period because our school is big.
In euphoria the characters at school wear certain bold types of outfits, like for example Maddie; she wears very bold outfits, a full beat with lots of eye makeup, and heels. In my opinion, from what I’ve seen the students at Skyline wear more basic types of clothes. I have seen a girl wear heels before & some girls wear bolder clothes, but I commonly see sweatpants or jeans and a basic top/hoodie.
I’ve read a lot about people’s different experiences in online comments and they say their high school is just like euphoria. While it may be similar to some high school experiences, it isn’t very similar to mine.
Still, euphoria is one of my favorite shows. It’s definitely worth watching. I dedicate every Sunday to watch the newly released episodes of season 3, while season 3 is them 4 years after high school, season 1 & 2 depicts the realistic insights of what some teenagers experience.
