In the mid-1980s, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America began the largest privately-run Public Service Announcement (PSA) campaign in history. The pinnacle of its campaign was the powerful 1987 television commercial, "This Is Your Brain On Drugs.”
This ad’s protagonist was a fresh, white-shelled egg. I’ll affectionately refer to her as Sunny. The narrator explains that Sunny is a representation of your brain. The camera then pans to Sunny’s nemesis, a hot, lightly greased skillet, and we’re told that it represents illegal drugs. Things do not go well for Sunny from here. We watch as Sunny smashes into the side of the skillet. Our hero breaks apart and, cracking wide open, her innards spill onto the hot grease. Sunny meets a terrible end, sizzling and burning as the narrator deadpans, “This is your brain on drugs.”
Everyone I spoke to who was old enough to remember this ad recalled it in striking detail. It’s little wonder, considering it is cited as one of the most influential commercials ever made and, since its launch, has been spoofed on television shows ranging from Saturday Night Live to Married With Children (2016).
Interestingly, this commercial teaches a bedrock truth, but not the one its writers and producers intended. This ad accurately explains that our minds, like Sunny the egg, are far more fragile than we imagine them to be. Our minds anticipate life experiences falling within a certain “range of tolerance,” and, if we have too many encounters outside this range, these minds of ours break into pieces.
Where this commercial goes astray is in its understanding of our mind’s nemesis, the skillet. At the time the ad was run—the mid-1980s—the two most popular street drugs among teens were marijuana and cocaine, and the ad’s skillet represents this illicit duo. But it turns out something completely different (and far more nefarious) puts our minds at risk, and shatters the vast majority of them…
Writer Francis Weller (2015) tells the story of a young woman, about seventeen years of age, who he met when spending time in an African village many years ago. This teenage girl had an extensive burn scar on her face, but, to his surprise, her scar didn’t make her at all........