Off The Wagon - Television Tropes & Idioms

In any show featuring a recovering alcoholic (or other such drug addict), they will inevitably return to drinking at least once during the series. In fairness, this happens quite a bit to recovering alcoholics in real life as well, but it's not as inevitable as television would have us believe (although it is one reason why many Real Life programs to help with alcohol and drug addiction take pains to stress that someone is a recovering alcoholic / addict rather than a cured one, and that it is an ongoing and often lifelong process rather than something that can be quickly fixed). In a drama, this is almost always a Very Special Episode. In a comedy, it can be done either as a Very Special Episode or just for laughs. The relapse can be caused by trying to drown sorrows.

Often the "Off The Wagon" will be sober again at the end of the series or movie. Most of the time the family or loved ones seem to forgive the relapse as soon as they see said character in any state other than wasted. See also Nailed To The Wagon.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Subverted in Monster, where a recovering alcoholic is thought to have fallen off a roof after having a drink.

Comic Books

Marvel Comics' Iron Man has fallen off the wagon more than once. In fact, he has tried to help fellow superhero Ms. Marvel/Binary/Warbird in her own battle with alcoholism.
Secret Six: Bane references this trope by name when he takes a dose of the super-steroid Venom to save Scandal. And by save Scandal we mean brutally murder several super-villains then completely lose his fucking mind and see Batman everywhere◊. And worse, it doesn't even work.
Bane: Off the wagon I fall.
Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise tends to do this when she's had a big fight with a friend, especially Francine.
In Incorruptible this happens to Louis Armadale, once he finds out that Max had killed a child.

Film

Haunting in Connecticut. Where the father starts out in recovery and later falls off.
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking..."
- A similar line in Independence Day is probably a Shout Out.
Played straight in Hamlet 2, where Dana Marschz, the main character, during goes on a drinking binge as part of his Heroic BSOD/Darkest Hour sequence.
William Munny in Unforgiven. First drinking. Then violence.
Silent Movie: Mel Funn is precariously on the wagon for the first part of the movie - everyone knows he has a problem, but he manages to keep away from the drink. Then he finds out his lady love Vilma Kaplan is a mole sent to pretend to love him and sabotage his film, and he falls off, HARD. Of course, she actually is in love with him and wants to help him, so they sober him up with The Power of Love and lots of coffee.
Thea in Applause does well for a time with the drinking, but does give in to drink and becomes confrontational toward her ex-husband.

Literature

Vimes falls off the wagon in Men at Arms. In Feet of Clay, the next book he appears in, he pretends to fall off again, as part of a scheme to make the person who's trying to frame him for murder look foolish.
The title character's (tragically inevitable) fall Off The Wagon he climbed onto in the first chapter is one of the key plot points of The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Happens in Rachel's Vacation.

Live-Action TV

New Tricks, Brian Lane, built up to over the whole of the most recent series.
Cheers, Sam Malone
Party of Five, Bailey Salinger
The West Wing, Leo McGarry (though only in a Flash Back)
Law & Order, Lenny Briscoe hits the bottle, and it leads (somewhat indirectly) to the death of a major character.
Babylon 5, Michael Garibaldi relapsed on two occasions: first, when he was framed for an assassination plot and on the run, and second, when he learned that he was physically incapable of killing the Smug Snake Psi Cop Al Bester, who mind-raped him and forced him to betray his friends.
Subverted in the MSCL ep appropriately titled "On the Wagon". Patty suspects Rayanne has fallen off, but it turns out she hasn't.
Battlestar Galactica's Saul Tigh does this at least once an episode, to the resignedness of his commanding officer. His wife, Ellen, simply never gets ON the wagon in the first place and is probably mainly responsible for Saul's drinking: because I'd drink too, if I had to kill my wife for being a suspected Cylon collaborator and then find out that oops, I'm a Cylon myself.
Kitchen Confidential had Jack Bordain take a sip of champagne, but spit it back into the glass.
Life had an episode, "Powerless," where Dani Reese is forced at gunpoint to start downing vodka shots. Of course, Reese had spent the beginning of the episode at a bar before going to her AA meeting.
- She was technically going to the meetings to get over her drug addiction, not her alcoholism— which doesn't really make it any better, but does explain why the guy holding her at gunpoint didn't have the advantage he thought he had.
Averted (so far) with Law & Order / SVU's Capt. Don Cragen, who has been known to keep a bottle of vodka in his office and serve others from it.
- Played straight with SVU's Sonya Paxton, though, who fell off the wagon and came to court drunk, causing a mistrial and her going to rehab.
  - Actually, she was never on the wagon, but was playing the Functional Addict.
In flashbacks in the Lost episode "A Tale of Two Cities," Jack gives his sober father, Christian, a good shove Off The Wagon, which ultimately leads Christian to lose his job, go on a bender, and die.
Subverted in an episode of of the sitcom Titus: The title character's father, habitual drinker Ken Titus, goes on the wagon, and his relatives find his sober behavior so insufferable that within two weeks they have an intervention to urge him to start drinking again.
- Played straight when Titus' business closes he starts drinking again. Five minutes into the next episode he sobers up for a total of 10 minutes of him being a drunk.
Played with in ER, when recovering prescription drug addict Dr. John Carter finds an unaccounted-for bottle of Vicodin in a patient's room, pockets it, and takes two of the pills. Averted in that he almost immediately forces himself to vomit up the pills, before they can take effect. This is still treated as a (minor) relapse by his evaluator, Dr. Kerry Weaver; and his monitoring period is extended as a result.
True Blood, Detective Andy Bellefleur
Rescue Me plays with this quite a bit in Tommy Gavin's case. After spending most of Season 1 in various stages of drunkenness, he goes on the wagon in Season 2. The audience is occasionally shown a scene of Tommy descending into drunkenness after something particularly tragic happens to him, only for it to be revealed that it was just in his head and he's still sober, albeit miserable.
In the sixth season of Grey's Anatomy Chief Webber falls off the wagon. He was subtly shown drinking and dropping hints for several episodes before the show called attention to it.
In Leverage "The Bottle Job" Nathan falls off the wagon. And stays off.
Mac from JAG, after her ex dies in her arms. She's also being stalked.
On NYPD Blue, rehabbed alcoholic Andy Sipowicz started drowning his sorrows hard after his patrolman son was killed on duty.
Done hilariously in Father Ted. While the parochial house is entertaining a former television personality, Mrs. Doyle persuades (i.e. forces) him to have a bit of sherry. He quickly degenerates into a drunken wreck who destroys their living room, rants about his dismissal from the BBC (which was because of his alcoholism) scares off Father Jack, and then jumps out the window. At the end of the episode, he decides to have another drink of sherry (having been convinced that he could hold his drink) and a single sup is enough to have him ranting and jumping through the window again.
Mad Men's Duck Phillips is a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon in Season 2's "Maidenform." While at first at least somewhat sympathetic (he fell off in the middle of a messy divorce), he becomes increasingly dickish as he slides further and further back into alcoholism. By Season 4, even Peggy—who still trusted him to some degree—comes to see how much of a tremendous asshole he's become.
In Eastenders, Phil Mitchell seems to fall off the wagon on average every six months. And now he's a recovering crack addict as well, what's the bet there won't be a relapse at some point?
In the Gag Dub Soupy Norman, the titular Soupy is regularly mentioned as having been a former drink and drug addict, but has now been sober for over a year ( that's nearly 12 months! ). However, every time he appears in the show he is so drunk that he can barely stand up or speak coherently, and regularly tries to start fights with the character Jack, who answers the door. What makes this funnier is that Jack makes the comments about Soupy being sober for so long just AFTER he's kicked Soupy out for being drunk. Of course, Jack's whole character is based around the fact he never remembers anything, even if it happened a few seconds before.
Warehouse13 has a interesting case when the six-year sober Pete goes through a un-itentional Freaky Friday Flip with his female partner Myka... who was at her High School Reunion and had just downed three vodka martinis. Oops.
Well, won't this be fun to explain at the next AA meeting...

Professional Wrestling

This happens all the time with professional wrestlers, particularly older veterans working the independent circuit. Scott Hall and Jake "The Snake" Roberts are amongst the more notorious examples of this, but far from the only ones.
At TNA's Victory Road pay per view in 2011, Jeff Hardy showed up loaded for his match against Sting. The subsequent match ended up going less than a minute.
The most famous example is Jake Roberts' appearance at a 1999 pay per view titled Heroes of Wrestling. Prior to his match with Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, Jake cut a slurred, rambling, incoherent promo. When he came to the ring, he was so drunk he couldn't even stand up straight, engaged in lewd behavior with some fans at ringside, then got in the ring, held his snake up to his crotch and started stroking it. Needless to say the match didn't last long.
Sadly many wrestlers never recover from substance abuse problems, leading to a shockingly long list of those who have died of unnatural causes before the age of 50 including Mr. Perfect (Accute Cocaine intoxication), Eddie Guerrero (Heart attack caused by years of steroid and perscription drug abuse), The British Bulldog (Same thing), Crash Holly (Choked on alcohol induced vomit), Miss Elizabeth (Drug overdose), Bam Bam Bigelow (Drug overdose), the list goes on and on.

Newspaper Comics

Funky Winkerbean's title character went through a bout of alcoholism in the '90s after the first Time Skip, but got it under control and remained sober through the second Time Skip as well. A 2010 strip appeared to show him finally depressed enough about his life to order a screwdriver...but subverted this trope when Funky instead vented his problems to the bar tender and left without drinking anything.

Real Life

When withdrawal symptoms are shown, it tends to focus on short term, acute symptoms (see the horrific sequence in Trainspotting). However, lower impact withdrawal symptoms can last for months, even years. Insomnia, delirium, depression... that's one reason why they're called "recovering" rather than "recovered".

Theatre

The Boys in the Band. Michael has stopped drinking for five weeks, to prevent anxiety attacks, but falls off the wagon - hard - during Harold's birthday party.
Doc Delaney, in William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba.

Video Games

Averted in Unreal II The Awakening. One of the characters is a man who was once deep into the bottle, and manages to hold throughout the series - despite, as the main character points out, having numerous opportunities to smuggle in some booze.
Played for laughs in Fable II. After completing a quest for an npc, said npc's wife tells him to get back on the wagon. He instantly responds, "Wagon? Where? Kids, look out for the wagon!!"

Web Comics

In Misfile Rumisiel spends more time off the wagon than on it, he is getting better though.

Western Animation

Dr. Rockso of Metalocalypse gets clean in one episode. In his return episode, he falls off the wagon, gloriously (see page image above).
- In a later episode, Pickles goes dry after a drunken international incident involving a flying drum kit. Later on, he has to get drunk to save the band with the exact same stunt.
- Earlier, Pickles' old band Snakes and Barrels went clean after breaking up, but shortly before their reunion concert they were convinced to take a hit of experimental drug Totally Awesome Sweet Alabama Liquid Snake. This comes back to bite them later (in the same episode when Dr. Rockso falls off the wagon) while they're trying to put on a show as a new straight-edge band.
Subverted in, of all things, The Simpsons. They were doing a civil war re-enactment of...questionable historical accuracy. Somebody offers Barney, who had previously been a raging alchoholic, a drink. He worries that he'll fall off the wagon, decides to drink it anyway...and marvels when he still feels fine.
- In "Deep Space Homer", Barney goes on the wagon for astronaut training and aces all his tests. However, he degenerates back into his town drunkard persona after celebrating with a toast of non-alcoholic champagne.
  - More than that, Barney keeps getting on and off the wagon to the point where his current status as an alcoholic changes from episode to episode.
Fantastic Mr. Fox: titular character says this word for word when apologizing to his wife about stealing birds again, after he promised he wouldn't ever return to that profession. Hilarious in Hindsight as George Clooney's character in Ocean's Eleven got in trouble for the same thing.