The way ‘I May Destroy You’ depicts drug use is refreshing – it’s time we caught up to reality

The nuanced portrayal in the show highlights how drugs – and the complications around them – are a part of everyday life for many

In a relative rarity on British television screens, the BBC's I May Destroy You carefully reflects the complicated reality of social drug use.

The show follows a young female writer coming to terms with a sexual assault after her drink was spiked at a nightclub, in a storyline based on the real-life experience of the show’s creator and lead Michaela Coel.

Throughout the show, Coel’s character Arabella and her friends experiment with various drugs in different settings – from sourcing drugs abroad to watching TV sharing a spliff with a flatmate. The drug use, the mixing in particular, can be jarring and is often uncomfortable to watch. However, while drugs use is inherent to some character’s lives, it runs alongside the narrative.

Rather than be universally condemned, recreational drug use is depicted as you might find it in any group of friends. Crucially, there is no social shame in their drug use, nothing is treated secretively.

There’s usually a sharp contrast in how legal and illegal substances are characterised on television. Instead, in I May Destroy You the legal and the illicit blur in both "going out" social situations and also as part of Arabella’s creative process, where viewers watch her use marijuana to help her write.

Arabella and her friends, and the drug dealer, are educated and successfully employed. There is a matter-of-factness and ubiquity that better reflects the situation of millennials today.

We learn later in the series that Arabella’s love interest Biaggio chooses to be sober after his mother and sister both died from overdoses. I have a family history of addiction and lost a brother to heroin – drugs have punctuated my life as long as I can remember.

I’ve seen closer than most the devastation substance addiction can have. But I don’t believe in an intrinsic good or bad nature of any substance, and that’s what Coel communicates so perfectly with a depiction of drugs that is unusually nuanced.

Coel does not shy away from the life-altering problems drugs can create – indeed a drink being spiked is part of the show's central depiction of the aftermath of sexual assault – but the way they are shown is a fairer reflection of what is happening in many social circles than what is typically seen on television.

The characters use drugs recreationally throughout, they’re woven into the fabric of the story rather than being it’s driving force. Often the script will miss out full disclosure of what exactly is being used, leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own experiences. Here, there’s a clear cultural accommodation of drug use by both users and non-users who tolerate it as part of their normal world.

Every base is covered in the show – although the issue of legality is in the background. The law is slow to change and this is one of the many complications depicted, it has not caught up to some of the conversations now being had around some drugs and their place alongside alcohol and nicotine.

Cultural change often happens much quicker than any modification of law. The complicated nature of the depiction of drugs in I May Destroy You is part of that, and legislators should take note.