APPLE CIDER VINEGAR. Which way leads to recovery?

Before the roaring twenties of the 21st century arrived, people had to somehow build the entire Instagram business of alternative treatments for the most severe diseases—giving false hope to millions of sick individuals in the process. The problem was that they didn’t actually cure anyone, or at least the vast majority, aside from cases unexplained by conventional medicine, which naturally occur in science. However, the story in Apple Cider Vinegar goes much further, as it not only exposes the mechanisms of business and mental deception but also delves into the psychology of a particular protagonist who promotes alternative treatments. An incurable disease was lurking inside her.

There are two layers that Apple Cider Vinegar explores. The first is an objective one, presenting the business mechanisms—how a network of connections, relationships, and effective advertising methods is created to promote an ideology of healing, ensuring that as many people as possible engage with it and form a kind of online guru personality, whose strength and knowledge others will believe in. The second is the psychological drama of a single protagonist who desperately tries to find her place in life. She is lonely, psychotic, and suffers from pathological lying, yet she is also cunning enough to use emerging social media to reinvent herself—a version of herself that is liked, even admired, has friends, and, most importantly, matters on a global scale. In reality, most people want to be like that, but they don’t pursue this goal through deception—especially not by faking a serious illness like cancer. And it is precisely this moral boundary that Belle Gibson (played by Kaitlyn Dever) crosses, revealing her distorted perception of morality and her deeply pathological, mythomanic personality, shaped by past traumas that now manifest like a disease—similar, in a way, to cancer itself. This is a slap in the face to all those genuinely battling the illness.

This second layer of the series carries much greater dramatic weight, as it focuses the viewer on personal events, making them more emotionally resonant. It’s an interesting narrative technique—drawing attention to the serious issue of pseudo-scientific charlatanism in treating severe diseases by analyzing someone’s personal struggles and how they overcame them by creating an online business with the most valuable product of all: hope for a cure to an otherwise incurable disease. Millions will follow this path because every individual experiences their illness uniquely, seeing themselves through their fear of suffering and death—fears that make them blind to others and thus vulnerable to deception. Desperation makes them cling to anything that fuels their hope. This is a natural human response to illness, but no one has the right to exploit that vulnerability. Belle, as a profoundly disturbed individual (faking illnesses), did just that. However, professional alternative medicine entrepreneurs do the same—only more consciously, calculatingly, and without suffering from mental illness.

Apple Cider Vinegar is a well-thought-out series, gripping in its storytelling without unnecessary melodrama or excessive portrayals of terminally ill patients. The production also avoids too much pathos. The protagonist steadily follows her chosen path, while the spiral of lies around her gradually grows—seemingly effective at first but ultimately carrying long-term consequences. Viewers walk this path with her, leading to her eventual exposure, episode by episode, witnessing the depths of human gullibility and calculated deceit. The modern narrative style enhances the viewing experience—frequent direct-to-camera addresses by characters, social media overlays that highlight key moments without being gimmicky, and an aesthetically refined use of typography, including the title designs. Apple Cider Vinegar pleases both the eye and the mind. It provokes negative emotions toward the protagonist’s actions while also evoking a sense of poignancy as we realize how powerful human emotions can be—sometimes strong enough to distort reality and even reshape it.

I do not dismiss cases of unexplained recoveries, but I do fear the charlatans who seek to profit from selling hope, taking money from people while steering them away from conventional medicine. Our faith can indeed shape reality, but true healing requires extraordinary strength.

Today, the promotion of alternative treatments—including outright fraudulent ones—is far more widespread than in the era depicted in the series. As viewers, we now know much more. There are also many more people advocating for a healthy lifestyle, which is a positive development. However, the number of individuals profiting from false and desperate hope has skyrocketed. Patients—sometimes terminally ill—need time, and they should not be exploited. Hope cannot be bought. The road to recovery is often winding, but one must not follow it blindly.