Jax Stewart’s struggle in ‘Reasonable Doubt’ exposes the quiet reality of being a ‘high-achieving’ Black woman

In “Reasonable Doubt” season 4 Jax’s growing reliance on pain pills reflects a reality that often goes unseen within successful Black women. 

This article contains light spoilers about Season 4 of “Reasonable Doubt” on Hulu.

Olivia Pope had her oversized glass of red. Annalise Keating had her vodka. Mary Jane Paul had her nightly pour. Now, in Season 4 of Hulu’s “Reasonable Doubt,” Jax Stewart has her pills.

Since the show premiered in 2022, Jax has been the picture of a woman who can handle anything. This season, viewers watch Jax, a successful attorney, navigate a tsunami of changes in her life. After leaving her corporate job to start her own practice, she finds herself dealing with the physical and emotional scars from a gunshot wound in addition to balancing her responsibilities as a mother, wife, and lawyer representing a demanding client in a high-profile criminal case, and the responsibilities of entrepreneurship. 

And just as it would for most people, maintaining that balance has proven very difficult, leading Jax’s character down a path that is heartbreaking, sad, hard to watch, but also very real. Jax, played by Emayatzy Corinealdi, falls down a slippery slope of substance abuse, and while many social media users have voiced their mixed reactions to this part of the storyline, it unveils the uncomfortable reality many “high-achieving” women, especially Black women, navigate.

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“Maybe the point of Jax falling into a dependency on pills is about exploring a deeper truth about how high-achieving Black women often push ourselves beyond their capacity in the aftermath of trauma, carrying the weight of everything we’ve endured while drifting closer to vices that offer temporary relief, until our bodies finally forcing us to slow down, confront the pain, and heal fully,” another user wrote on Threads.

This is not the first time we’ve seen this trope on television. For Jax Stewart, it started with the occasional drink and joint after a hard day, and has now progressed into pain pills. In shows like “Scandal,” “How to Get Away With Murder,” and “Being Mary Jane,” viewers watched successful women like Olivia Pope, Annalise Keating, and Mary Jane Paul lean on alcohol to cope with the demands of their lives. Even in “Insecure,” Molly’s character is seen smoking the occasional joint after a long day. 

While none of this means a glass of wine or a joint after a long day automatically leads to addiction (though it can), it does point to a pattern that is also seen off-screen: people in high-pressure, high-status jobs often find quiet ways to cope with the demands that come with success.

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For years, experts have researched the links between stressful occupations, trauma, mental health struggles and addiction. And just as research shows the complexities of substance abuse, what it looks like and the variety of factors that can lead an individual to it, Black advocates like Khadi A. Oluwatoyin, the founder of Sober Black Girls Club, have pointed to different substance use patterns in Black communities, particularly among Black women. 

“Depression looks different for Black women; that’s obvious—and so does addiction,” Oluwatoyin said in a conversation with American Addiction Centers. “Addiction for us doesn’t look like going to rehab multiple times; usually, we have a lot of responsibilities, and we can’t afford to do that. First of all, we don’t usually have the finances to do that, but also, we have so many people depending on us that we can’t do that. So I think for a lot of Black women, either problematic drinking or addiction manifests, while usually being functional.” 

And even just looking at Jax’s substance use in “Reasonable Doubt” is complicated. With a father who had a history of substance abuse, viewers saw the fictional lawyer decline pills in fear of her addiction risk factor. But between chronic pain, mounting pressure at work and flashbacks to the shooting, the pills went from a last resort to a crutch, fast.

Only time will tell how the “Reasonable Doubt” writers decide to develop this storyline, but it is most certainly a reminder that addiction does not always look like Wanda in “Holiday Heart” or Franklin at the end of “Snowfall.” Sometimes it looks like a woman in polished suits and a killer bob, showing up for everyone but herself.