Charlie Sawyer
Published November 28, 2025 10:22am
Updated November 28, 2025 10:22am
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Emily Tisshaw was hospitalised on numerous occasions due to her addiction (Picture: Metro/Emily Tisshaw)
‘Everyone needs to get addicted to one thing at least once in their life to prove to themselves that they can break an addiction,’ claimed comedian Rachel Sennott, during an episode of internet show, SubwayTakes.
‘Play with the fire,’ she adds. ‘I was addicted to laxatives for one year.’
It might have been a tongue-in-cheek comment from the I Love LA actress, but her words hit a nerve.
Hundreds of comments quickly came flooding in, accusing Rachel of trivialising addiction.
‘Never disagreed with someone this quick,’ wrote @BBallQueens. ‘How out of touch do you have to be to act like addiction is some cute little quirk,’ @brunolovrr added.
Even host, Kareem Rahma, looked perplexed, saying: ‘I’m gonna… push back on that.’
@subwaytakesEpisode 556: Everyone should get addicted to something at least once to prove to themselves that they can break an addiction!! Feat @Rachel Sennott #funny #silly #losangeles #nyc #rachelsennott
♬ original sound – SubwayTakes
While addiction might be a punchline here, it’s no laughing matter for those affected by it.
Between April 2023 and March 2024 there were 310,863 adults in the UK in contact with drug and alcohol treatment services. Tragically, the total number of people who died while in contact with treatment services in 2023 to 2024 was 4,022 — that’s 1.3% of all adults in treatment.
‘I took drugs in the morning, afternoon, weekdays and weekends’
Emily Tisshaw, 31, first started taking drugs at parties, aged just 19.
She tells Metro: ‘I enjoyed dancing, going out, being around lots of friends, doing silly stuff.
‘I remember my first MDMA bomb. I was 19 and felt hopeless with the general state of the world, but MDMA transported me away from despair and into a state of euphoria for hours.’
But what started off as a fun habit, soon spiralled.
‘Feeling high was something I chased,’ she says. ‘I did it with friends, strangers, and alone. In the morning, afternoon, weekdays and weekends.
Emily never expected her addiction to spiral so far out of control (Picture: Emily Tisshaw)
‘The first time I realised I had a problem was when I hadn’t eaten in a few days and I remembered that I needed to eat — not because I was hungry, but because I wanted my MDMA high to feel “better” than it would have on an empty stomach.’
To others, it looked like she was having fun, but during the height of her addiction, Emily lost two jobs in retail. ‘I’d show up late and confused,’ she said.
‘I ended up being unemployed, on sick benefits and destructively depressed.
‘I was taking drugs almost every day (either weed, alcohol, speed, MDMA, ketamine, coke or all of the above). I wasn’t eating much and I slept only when I really needed to.’
Emily has made incredible progress over the past five years (Picture: Emily Tisshaw)
Things took a more serious turn when Emily began experiencing psychosis: ‘I’d start hallucinating. I’d hear voices, and see figures in the dark.
‘My thoughts became fixated on delusional stories about being watched, listened to or followed. I even started having conversations with people that weren’t there, thinking that hours had passed when it’d been minutes.
‘I had a few episodes and overdoses and was admitted to hospital several times.’
Emily would often try and kick the habit, but would fall back into the cycle.
‘The last episode I had scared me so much that I felt I needed to stop or I would never be able to escape,’ she says.
After Emily was discharged from the hospital (having experienced another bout of drug-induced psychosis), the NHS contacted her about working with a crisis team.
Out of ‘desperation and fear more than anything else’ Emily agreed and began cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
It was a few months after this intervention that she managed to stick on this path of sobriety.
Emily experienced numerous bouts of psychosis during her addiction (Picture: Emily Tisshaw)
When asked about her thoughts on Rachel’s take, she says: ‘My immediate thoughts were that she was out of touch. I think addiction is a spectrum and it made me think she hadn’t ever experienced the full width of it. If she had, I don’t think she would’ve said that.’
While she felt as though Rachel’s comment came more from a place of ‘ignorance and inexperience’ as opposed to ‘malice’, it doesn’t take away from the distress she caused.
‘I would tell her to never say that again (or less politely, shut up),’ Emily continued.
‘I would say that addiction ruins lives, families, homes—that people die from addiction. I think her sentiment is that people should experience overcoming something, but I’d tell her to do her research on what that “something” should actually be, because addiction is not it.’
The 31-year-old has now become a pillar of home for other people (Picture: Emily Tisshaw)
Addiction is not a confidence exercise
Every single addiction specialist Metro spoke with was equally alarmed by the concept that addiction can be an experiment.
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Dr Georges Petitjean, founder of WARM: the Workplace Addiction and Recovery Movement, explained to Metro that addiction ‘is not something people try on to test resilience,’ and nor is it something that people struggle with simply because they lack willpower.
He continued: ‘This message is deeply shaming for anyone living with addiction. It ignores genetic, environmental and trauma-related factors that predispose some people.
‘It also overlooks the fact that, once an addiction has developed, there are real changes in the brain that make it difficult for someone to “just stop”.’
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Metro also spoke with Dr. Giuseppe Pierpaolo Merola, an experienced psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who has worked across several public mental health services. He perhaps sums his feelings best by saying: ‘Nobody is advising anyone to “get run over by a car once, just to check if the bone heals properly”, right?’
Is there such a thing as a healthy addiction?
During Rachel’s SubwayTakes she mentions how the kind of addiction she’s referring to could involve a ‘weird workout routine.’
This implies that not only is addiction something worth dabbling with, but that it’s not always harmful.
It’s a sentiment Dr Georges firmly disagrees with. ‘Language matters here,’ he says.
‘People often use the term casually, such as saying they are addicted to coffee or addicted to the gym, when what they really mean is that they enjoy something or engage in it habitually.
‘But addiction, clinically, is a pattern of behaviour that continues despite harm. By definition, that cannot be healthy.’
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