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Lifestyle

This Instagrammer Taught Me a Lesson on Addiction

This article is written by a student writer from the Spoon University at Ole Miss chapter.

Sometimes, life isn’t as picture-perfect as we make it look on Instagram. Most of the time, our posts fail to tell the entire story. Louise Delage is the perfect example of this.

She seems to be #lifegoals with her fun-filled posts of her traveling the world, looking flawless, lounging on yachts, and killing the fashion game. She’s the girl that averages 3,000 likes a picture, and if followers we dollars, she could pay my tuition about five times. She’s the girl we’re all secretly envious of. 

The thing that most of us miss when we’re scrolling through her picture-perfect profile? In every single picture, she’s holding a drink. Louise Delage is an alcoholic.  

This leads to the question that we all need to ask ourselves: if someone we love has an alcohol addiction, would we be able to spot it? Would we even realize what we’re liking? 

The second thing that we all failed to notice? Her account is fictional.  It was an attempt to raise awareness of how easy it can be to miss alcohol addiction by Addict Aide. Addict Aide sought the help of creative agency BETC Paris and production company Francine Francoise to launch the campaign. 

The purpose of this campaign was to raise awareness in young people about how easy it is to miss the addiction of someone they are close to.  

BETC president Stéphane Xiberras told CNN, “She’s the girl next door,, she could be your daughter or someone you know. You can miss something like this. It’s so difficult for parents if your child is an alcoholic, you are not able to find the clues to understand things.” 

He continued to say that he was pleased with the impact of the campaign. The video had more than 500,000 views across Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. It also because a trending topic on Twitter in France. 

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) states that 88,000 death are annually attributed to excessive alcohol use. 

The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism released roughly 20 percent of college students meet the criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder.  They also report that 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor-vehicle accidents. 

“We all know a Louise Delage: the Addict Aide platform offers tools to help to all of those who ask themselves questions on their consumption or that of someone close to them,” said Michel Teynaud, co-founder of the Addict Aide platform. 

The video that went viral: 

Remote Intern for Spoon HQ.