I’m not saying you have to do it on your own, or that friends aren’t important to getting sober. There is a difference between wanting to get sober, and getting sober because someone else wants you to get sober. In the end the addict has to make the decision not to go back every day for the rest of their lives.
The way they portrayed the scene at the end is House deciding not to take the pills because it would ruin any chance of a relationship with Cuddy. He’s pondering going back until Cuddy appears and tells him she loves him. The relationship becomes the reason to stay sober, which doesn’t seem very healthy to me. Relationships are important to support the person in going/staying sober. What if the relationship falls apart and removes the reason in the process?
I would much rather have House not going back on the pills because he realizes it would make him even more miserable. Having Cuddy, Wilson, and his therapist support him in that decision would be perfectly ok.
I don’t see the House/Cuddy relationship as coming out of nowhere.
They slept together in med school and one of the “revelations” of the 80s party episode was that House was desperate to call her the next day, but he had just gotten kicked out of school.
Did they ever clear up the mystery of the crane operator? As far as I can recall, they dropped him like a hot potato. What *was *his problem anyway?..TRM (who loved this episode, by the way)
He had a cyst or tumor on his spine that caused him to pass out when he sat too long. He had been working double shifts and thought he had been dozing off, so he’d been drinking coffee and taking caffeine supplements.