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NIDA and HBO team up to educate the masses about addiction [Updated 3/13/07]
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On TV: 'Addiction' takes pains to show us real drug abuse
Seattle P-I
March 13, 2007
Addiction is a demon that can slip into anyone's house without warning. Once inside, it can take a lifetime to evict. Television has done little in the way of illuminating how addiction becomes a permanent part of so many lives, preferring to display its ravages for dramatic effect. For screenwriters, drug abuse is an easy way to give a hero defining shadows. Witness this season's engaging story arc about "House's" central character grappling with his Vicodin addiction.
Unscripted television, however, is where the line between compelling depictions and exploitation can get blurred, as is the case with A&E's "Intervention." Each episode follows an addict at one of the lowest coils in his or her downward spiral, confronting the person with a professionally proctored intervention in the last quarter of the show. The viewer is not left to contemplate the subject's healing process as deeply as how messed up that person is. We get 25 percent recovery, 75 percent chaos.
"Intervention's" third season premieres a day after HBO launches its thorough, multiplatform "Addiction" project. The centerpiece of this 14-part series is the feature documentary that achieves everything three seasons of "Intervention" have not.
Education is the goal here, not drama -- although that's inherent to the subject. In taking an illuminative approach, HBO gives audiences a comprehensive series that covers an impressive amount of ground.
"Addiction" consists of nine films by various directors, tackling subjects that run the gamut from weighing the health versus the mental-health factors in addiction to showing the social costs of managed care's ongoing refusal to fund effective treatments.
Its primary purpose, though, is to show the wide-reaching nature of the epidemic. More than 23 million Americans are battling addiction, but only about 10 percent are getting treatment. Blame the secretive nature of substance abuse, twinned with the long-standing false tendency to associate addiction with moral failure.
The main points "Addiction" makes quite well are that drug and alcohol abuse is a brain disease -- and that it's also a young person's affliction, developing in most people between ages 18 and 25.
Thanks to technological innovations in imaging, we can see what a craving looks like: it shows up on monitors as warning-red pools blooming in the brain when an urge is triggered.
In the end, though, it is still television. As if to remind us of that, the documentary opens with Jon Alpert's gruesome, cautionary gripper "Saturday Night in a Dallas ER," where an emergency-room doctor allows cameras to glimpse substance-abuse-related traumas. Some shots make you flinch, including a glimpse at a stab wound sustained by a man under the influence.
"Addiction" is more remarkable for what we don't see in that introductory 90 minutes, such as addicts within the throes of a high. Instead of the too-familiar Partnership For A Drug-Free America tactic, using hysteria and frightening images to smack home the dire nature of the topic, "Addiction's" emphasis is on understanding the disease, innovations in diagnosis and treatment.
From "A Mother's Desperation," to the teenage kid who casually admits to having popped 10 mushroom caps in one sitting ("The Adolescent Addict"), to the crack addict desperate to kick the drug ("The Science of Relapse"), "Addiction" is careful to preserve the dignity of its subjects. Relapse is not a weakness of will, but a reflex that's difficult to control -- perhaps less so with new medications.
Indeed, there's a distinct pro-pharmaceutical bent to "Addiction," enough to give a person pause. A sizable portion of the documentary sings the praises of drugs such as Suboxone, a non-narcotic medication that curbs opiate cravings, and Topiramate, an alcohol-craving blocker still in clinical trials. It also is true that the public is largely unaware of the growing variety of addiction-curbing pharmaceuticals.
They can be life changing. One man confesses his drinking had turned into a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week affair he could only break off with drug intervention. " It's too bad I didn't come to this realization a long time ago. I can't change that," he said. "But I can determine what's going to happen tomorrow. And I'm not going to drink."
Only after an hour into the documentary do the experts stress that prescriptions are not magic bullets, and that addiction is a chronic ailment that can take a lifetime of sustained vigilance simply to maintain. When you that into account, the heavy emphasis on medicinal intervention raises an eyebrow. Focus on community support and talk therapy seem almost an afterthought.
But there's no question that this series' intentions come from the right place. HBO and its partners, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, have put copious resources into "Addiction" and its accompaniment of 13 short films, airing as "Addiction: The Supplementary Series."
Those shorts will be available on HBO2 in three parts between 8 and 10 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, followed each night by the premieres of four independent documentaries (two of them airing on Sunday) at 10.
HBO and its partners have also sponsored a 30-city community-outreach effort. The book "Addiction: Why Can't They Just Stop?" is available now, and a DVD set of the series hits stores next Tuesday. Finally, all 14 parts of the series will be available through the channel's On Demand service, and of course, there's plenty of content at hbo.com/addiction.
The Web page for A&E's "Intervention" (aetv.com/intervention/) also offers information, including links to treatment centers and instructions on properly staging a sit-down. The most important part is a form for people interested in having an episode star their ailing loved ones. One section reads, "Please remember that the person suffering from an addiction cannot know about the possible intervention or offer of treatment in order to insure the best chances for success."
Success of what, exactly? An episode?
You can't talk about "Intervention" without acknowledging its vulgarity. This is a show that invites you to drop down a chute and land in a pile of dirty laundry and despair. There's the deceptiveness of its approach; producers tell the subject they're making a documentary on addiction without mentioning the intervention.
This week it follows Ryan, a college dropout and OxyContin addict who injects it up to 15 times a day. Just thinking about a needle going into a vein is enough to make a person squirm, but the cameras capture him doing it several times, once in his devastated mother's home and another at a friend's house -- with children present.
"Intervention's" detractors are right in some respect. This is concentrated trash TV, stronger than mainlining "Cheaters" or "Jerry Springer." Honestly though, at 10 on a Friday night, how fun can it be to watch a kid shoot up?
Not very. It never is, and that idea gives the series value. There are plenty of people who have a Ryan in their lives, or who are some version of that very lost soul.
The occasional episode of "Intervention" can provide reassurance that their battles are not unique. It's an odd balm, even if the fact that "Intervention" isn't solution-oriented TV like "Addiction" may give it a lower worth.
That said, "Intervention" deserves points for revealing one raw truth the HBO series does not -- that family confrontations don't always work. Addiction is not a struggle anyone can underestimate and that slap of harsh honesty, in its own way, helps too.
Link
Seattle P-I
March 13, 2007
Addiction is a demon that can slip into anyone's house without warning. Once inside, it can take a lifetime to evict. Television has done little in the way of illuminating how addiction becomes a permanent part of so many lives, preferring to display its ravages for dramatic effect. For screenwriters, drug abuse is an easy way to give a hero defining shadows. Witness this season's engaging story arc about "House's" central character grappling with his Vicodin addiction.
Unscripted television, however, is where the line between compelling depictions and exploitation can get blurred, as is the case with A&E's "Intervention." Each episode follows an addict at one of the lowest coils in his or her downward spiral, confronting the person with a professionally proctored intervention in the last quarter of the show. The viewer is not left to contemplate the subject's healing process as deeply as how messed up that person is. We get 25 percent recovery, 75 percent chaos.
"Intervention's" third season premieres a day after HBO launches its thorough, multiplatform "Addiction" project. The centerpiece of this 14-part series is the feature documentary that achieves everything three seasons of "Intervention" have not.
Education is the goal here, not drama -- although that's inherent to the subject. In taking an illuminative approach, HBO gives audiences a comprehensive series that covers an impressive amount of ground.
"Addiction" consists of nine films by various directors, tackling subjects that run the gamut from weighing the health versus the mental-health factors in addiction to showing the social costs of managed care's ongoing refusal to fund effective treatments.
Its primary purpose, though, is to show the wide-reaching nature of the epidemic. More than 23 million Americans are battling addiction, but only about 10 percent are getting treatment. Blame the secretive nature of substance abuse, twinned with the long-standing false tendency to associate addiction with moral failure.
The main points "Addiction" makes quite well are that drug and alcohol abuse is a brain disease -- and that it's also a young person's affliction, developing in most people between ages 18 and 25.
Thanks to technological innovations in imaging, we can see what a craving looks like: it shows up on monitors as warning-red pools blooming in the brain when an urge is triggered.
In the end, though, it is still television. As if to remind us of that, the documentary opens with Jon Alpert's gruesome, cautionary gripper "Saturday Night in a Dallas ER," where an emergency-room doctor allows cameras to glimpse substance-abuse-related traumas. Some shots make you flinch, including a glimpse at a stab wound sustained by a man under the influence.
"Addiction" is more remarkable for what we don't see in that introductory 90 minutes, such as addicts within the throes of a high. Instead of the too-familiar Partnership For A Drug-Free America tactic, using hysteria and frightening images to smack home the dire nature of the topic, "Addiction's" emphasis is on understanding the disease, innovations in diagnosis and treatment.
From "A Mother's Desperation," to the teenage kid who casually admits to having popped 10 mushroom caps in one sitting ("The Adolescent Addict"), to the crack addict desperate to kick the drug ("The Science of Relapse"), "Addiction" is careful to preserve the dignity of its subjects. Relapse is not a weakness of will, but a reflex that's difficult to control -- perhaps less so with new medications.
Indeed, there's a distinct pro-pharmaceutical bent to "Addiction," enough to give a person pause. A sizable portion of the documentary sings the praises of drugs such as Suboxone, a non-narcotic medication that curbs opiate cravings, and Topiramate, an alcohol-craving blocker still in clinical trials. It also is true that the public is largely unaware of the growing variety of addiction-curbing pharmaceuticals.
They can be life changing. One man confesses his drinking had turned into a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week affair he could only break off with drug intervention. " It's too bad I didn't come to this realization a long time ago. I can't change that," he said. "But I can determine what's going to happen tomorrow. And I'm not going to drink."
Only after an hour into the documentary do the experts stress that prescriptions are not magic bullets, and that addiction is a chronic ailment that can take a lifetime of sustained vigilance simply to maintain. When you that into account, the heavy emphasis on medicinal intervention raises an eyebrow. Focus on community support and talk therapy seem almost an afterthought.
But there's no question that this series' intentions come from the right place. HBO and its partners, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, have put copious resources into "Addiction" and its accompaniment of 13 short films, airing as "Addiction: The Supplementary Series."
Those shorts will be available on HBO2 in three parts between 8 and 10 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, followed each night by the premieres of four independent documentaries (two of them airing on Sunday) at 10.
HBO and its partners have also sponsored a 30-city community-outreach effort. The book "Addiction: Why Can't They Just Stop?" is available now, and a DVD set of the series hits stores next Tuesday. Finally, all 14 parts of the series will be available through the channel's On Demand service, and of course, there's plenty of content at hbo.com/addiction.
The Web page for A&E's "Intervention" (aetv.com/intervention/) also offers information, including links to treatment centers and instructions on properly staging a sit-down. The most important part is a form for people interested in having an episode star their ailing loved ones. One section reads, "Please remember that the person suffering from an addiction cannot know about the possible intervention or offer of treatment in order to insure the best chances for success."
Success of what, exactly? An episode?
You can't talk about "Intervention" without acknowledging its vulgarity. This is a show that invites you to drop down a chute and land in a pile of dirty laundry and despair. There's the deceptiveness of its approach; producers tell the subject they're making a documentary on addiction without mentioning the intervention.
This week it follows Ryan, a college dropout and OxyContin addict who injects it up to 15 times a day. Just thinking about a needle going into a vein is enough to make a person squirm, but the cameras capture him doing it several times, once in his devastated mother's home and another at a friend's house -- with children present.
"Intervention's" detractors are right in some respect. This is concentrated trash TV, stronger than mainlining "Cheaters" or "Jerry Springer." Honestly though, at 10 on a Friday night, how fun can it be to watch a kid shoot up?
Not very. It never is, and that idea gives the series value. There are plenty of people who have a Ryan in their lives, or who are some version of that very lost soul.
The occasional episode of "Intervention" can provide reassurance that their battles are not unique. It's an odd balm, even if the fact that "Intervention" isn't solution-oriented TV like "Addiction" may give it a lower worth.
That said, "Intervention" deserves points for revealing one raw truth the HBO series does not -- that family confrontations don't always work. Addiction is not a struggle anyone can underestimate and that slap of harsh honesty, in its own way, helps too.
Link
tambourine-man
Bluelight Crew
This just in from pseudoscience: Addiction documentaries contain an element that excites dopamine receptors, shuts down the frontal lobe and causes intense cravings.
Pseudoscientists don’t know yet whether drug-documentary addicts are hooked by the gruesomely thrilling scenes of tourniquets and needles, the photos of pre-Vicodin fifth graders or the promise of redemption through higher powers. But something definitely sets the brain reeling with manic questions: How could they fall so far? How could so many of us? Whom will addiction strike next, and will the culprit be the demon rum or the demon OxyContin?
A scene from “Montana Meth,” one of the documentaries that make up HBO’s 14-part “Addiction” series.
The American addiction story, as refined by Alcoholics Anonymous, tells of good folks turned bad — of men taking drinks and drinks taking men. No wonder we crave this story: It’s the master narrative of innocence and fall, complete with the possibility of deliverance. Nor is it any wonder that HBO has embraced the genre with its current authoritarian gusto. That channel’s “Addiction,” an anthology of short films by famous documentary filmmakers, has its premiere tonight.
The blunt title holds promise. As a story, addiction to drugs and alcohol has a chilling and ritualistic arc. Typically, the variable is the drug. Some viewers go for the methamphetamine documentaries, with their slightly high-handed attitude toward the Midwest, their contested statistics and their focus on dental issues. Other viewers prefer the shadowy, stylish heroin ones, with the sexy, skinny kids and “Requiem for a Dream” fashion.
When it comes to drug-addiction TV, I’m a garbagehead: I watch it all. But to my amazement, “Addiction” doesn’t quite hit the spot. Someone at HBO seems to have instructed the esteemed filmmakers — auteurs like Albert Maysles and D. A. Pennebaker, even — to deny ravenous viewers what they want. The film is bereft of feel-good scenes and drug-movie clichés. As such, the shorts can build a cumulative sense of deprivation.
Don’t expect needles here, in other words, or ravaged street kids turning tricks, or spectacular scenes of delirium tremens. No one even gets high in “Addiction”; no fervid expression gives way to one of stoned beatitude. It’s enough to make you kind of mad: “Addiction” is holding out on us. And, surely, this is the point.
The program is part of a solemn project, something that Sheila Nevins, the enterprising president of HBO Documentary Films, has called “didactic television.” It is also devised to be more accessible than past HBO projects, with some cable systems, including RCN in the New York City area, showing it free during its first four-day run.
Intended to do more than entertain or alarm, then, “Addiction” is meant to sober people up. To that end, its message is this: Drug and alcohol addiction are diseases of the brain, and they can be treated, at least partly, with medicine.
This straightforward message is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it’s intrinsically controversial, since A.A. for a long time expected its participants to refrain entirely from drug use, even prescription pills. The model of addiction presented here — addiction as a brain disease — is somewhat at odds with the cognitive model used in classic 12-step programs.
Second, it’s remarkable that so many top-notch filmmakers have consented to push someone else’s point so hard. It’s almost ominous. The sameness of the films in “Addiction” might aid its effectiveness as propaganda, but as art it’s monotone; it’s hard to believe it’s the collaborative work of so many otherwise individualistic artists.
Evidently, filmmakers submitted film to HBO, which took over postproduction. As a result, each installment mixes vérité and to-the-camera interviews in precisely the same proportions; employs explanatory title cards and interviews with experts; showily defers to the experts, most of them M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s; refrains from using graphics, humor or archival photographs; and keeps sound bites short.
An exception here is Barbara Kopple. Her short film “Steamfitters Local Union 638” is crisp tonic with lime. Unlike the other filmmakers, she has stuck to her interests and her aesthetic, making a film about a labor union that now actively supports its members who want treatment for addictions. The faces and voices of the union members, many of whom have been installing heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems for decades, are like nobody else’s in “Addiction,” and indeed like those of few other people’s on television.
“We were the hardest-working,” says one union lifer, remembering the ’60s, when he was drinking daily on the job. “We were the biggest drinkers.” He recalls how the members used to enable one another as drinkers, helping them lie to their wives and families and still be paid.
Now the union uses the same infrastructure of loyalty to help people into detox and rehabilitation. Steamfitters like them — with mustaches and paunches like theirs — join them in meetings; there’s no interference from management or doctors. As rendered, this is an extremely effective, and good-natured, program.
By presenting both addiction and recovery as community affairs, only “Steamfitters Local Union 638” has added something beyond the brain-scan science to these drug and alcohol stories. Still, as I detoxed from the sensationalism I had gotten from other films and had been hoping for in “Addiction,” I also came to appreciate other parts of the program. One was the short by Chris Hegedus and Mr. Pennebaker. In their story of two young addicts who try a new Methadone-like drug to treat their cravings for prescription pills, the melancholy Amanda caught my eye. She’s kind of a lazy oracle.
As she’s driving to the clinic for the first time, contemplating the new drug that she’s hoping will relieve her dopesickness, she seems to speak for every kind of addict, as well as about the paradox of treating drug addiction with drugs.
As Amanda says, “I hope it works as good as everybody says it does, so I don’t have to worry about feeling like this anymore.”
When the Cravings Won’t Quit, Turn On the Camera
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: March 15, 2007
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/arts/television/15addi.html
Pseudoscientists don’t know yet whether drug-documentary addicts are hooked by the gruesomely thrilling scenes of tourniquets and needles, the photos of pre-Vicodin fifth graders or the promise of redemption through higher powers. But something definitely sets the brain reeling with manic questions: How could they fall so far? How could so many of us? Whom will addiction strike next, and will the culprit be the demon rum or the demon OxyContin?
A scene from “Montana Meth,” one of the documentaries that make up HBO’s 14-part “Addiction” series.
The American addiction story, as refined by Alcoholics Anonymous, tells of good folks turned bad — of men taking drinks and drinks taking men. No wonder we crave this story: It’s the master narrative of innocence and fall, complete with the possibility of deliverance. Nor is it any wonder that HBO has embraced the genre with its current authoritarian gusto. That channel’s “Addiction,” an anthology of short films by famous documentary filmmakers, has its premiere tonight.
The blunt title holds promise. As a story, addiction to drugs and alcohol has a chilling and ritualistic arc. Typically, the variable is the drug. Some viewers go for the methamphetamine documentaries, with their slightly high-handed attitude toward the Midwest, their contested statistics and their focus on dental issues. Other viewers prefer the shadowy, stylish heroin ones, with the sexy, skinny kids and “Requiem for a Dream” fashion.
When it comes to drug-addiction TV, I’m a garbagehead: I watch it all. But to my amazement, “Addiction” doesn’t quite hit the spot. Someone at HBO seems to have instructed the esteemed filmmakers — auteurs like Albert Maysles and D. A. Pennebaker, even — to deny ravenous viewers what they want. The film is bereft of feel-good scenes and drug-movie clichés. As such, the shorts can build a cumulative sense of deprivation.
Don’t expect needles here, in other words, or ravaged street kids turning tricks, or spectacular scenes of delirium tremens. No one even gets high in “Addiction”; no fervid expression gives way to one of stoned beatitude. It’s enough to make you kind of mad: “Addiction” is holding out on us. And, surely, this is the point.
The program is part of a solemn project, something that Sheila Nevins, the enterprising president of HBO Documentary Films, has called “didactic television.” It is also devised to be more accessible than past HBO projects, with some cable systems, including RCN in the New York City area, showing it free during its first four-day run.
Intended to do more than entertain or alarm, then, “Addiction” is meant to sober people up. To that end, its message is this: Drug and alcohol addiction are diseases of the brain, and they can be treated, at least partly, with medicine.
This straightforward message is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it’s intrinsically controversial, since A.A. for a long time expected its participants to refrain entirely from drug use, even prescription pills. The model of addiction presented here — addiction as a brain disease — is somewhat at odds with the cognitive model used in classic 12-step programs.
Second, it’s remarkable that so many top-notch filmmakers have consented to push someone else’s point so hard. It’s almost ominous. The sameness of the films in “Addiction” might aid its effectiveness as propaganda, but as art it’s monotone; it’s hard to believe it’s the collaborative work of so many otherwise individualistic artists.
Evidently, filmmakers submitted film to HBO, which took over postproduction. As a result, each installment mixes vérité and to-the-camera interviews in precisely the same proportions; employs explanatory title cards and interviews with experts; showily defers to the experts, most of them M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s; refrains from using graphics, humor or archival photographs; and keeps sound bites short.
An exception here is Barbara Kopple. Her short film “Steamfitters Local Union 638” is crisp tonic with lime. Unlike the other filmmakers, she has stuck to her interests and her aesthetic, making a film about a labor union that now actively supports its members who want treatment for addictions. The faces and voices of the union members, many of whom have been installing heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems for decades, are like nobody else’s in “Addiction,” and indeed like those of few other people’s on television.
“We were the hardest-working,” says one union lifer, remembering the ’60s, when he was drinking daily on the job. “We were the biggest drinkers.” He recalls how the members used to enable one another as drinkers, helping them lie to their wives and families and still be paid.
Now the union uses the same infrastructure of loyalty to help people into detox and rehabilitation. Steamfitters like them — with mustaches and paunches like theirs — join them in meetings; there’s no interference from management or doctors. As rendered, this is an extremely effective, and good-natured, program.
By presenting both addiction and recovery as community affairs, only “Steamfitters Local Union 638” has added something beyond the brain-scan science to these drug and alcohol stories. Still, as I detoxed from the sensationalism I had gotten from other films and had been hoping for in “Addiction,” I also came to appreciate other parts of the program. One was the short by Chris Hegedus and Mr. Pennebaker. In their story of two young addicts who try a new Methadone-like drug to treat their cravings for prescription pills, the melancholy Amanda caught my eye. She’s kind of a lazy oracle.
As she’s driving to the clinic for the first time, contemplating the new drug that she’s hoping will relieve her dopesickness, she seems to speak for every kind of addict, as well as about the paradox of treating drug addiction with drugs.
As Amanda says, “I hope it works as good as everybody says it does, so I don’t have to worry about feeling like this anymore.”
When the Cravings Won’t Quit, Turn On the Camera
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: March 15, 2007
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/arts/television/15addi.html
phr
Bluelighter
^
She obviously only watched part of the series, most notably the main one "Addiction." The other 13 parts get more in depth into the actual substances and their use.
I'm guessing she skipped watching the documentary entitled "Montana Meth." Most of which includes plenty of people shooting up, smoking, and explaining their rush/high. It shows one girl shooting up in her jugular about 3-4 times, and plenty of others cooking, tying, and spiking up.
Anyway, Addiction is pretty much what I expected. They describe the disease model of addiction without tackling the social issues such as the War on Drugs and legalization.
She obviously only watched part of the series, most notably the main one "Addiction." The other 13 parts get more in depth into the actual substances and their use.
I'm guessing she skipped watching the documentary entitled "Montana Meth." Most of which includes plenty of people shooting up, smoking, and explaining their rush/high. It shows one girl shooting up in her jugular about 3-4 times, and plenty of others cooking, tying, and spiking up.
Anyway, Addiction is pretty much what I expected. They describe the disease model of addiction without tackling the social issues such as the War on Drugs and legalization.
HottButtaz
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2007
- Messages
- 354
All joking aside, how do you catch addiction? Is it only through sharing needles, or can you get it sharing drinks at a bar or taking a puff off someones cig?
Sometimes when I take a shit in public restrooms, my dick dangles in the toilet water- am I at risk for addiction?
Sometimes when I take a shit in public restrooms, my dick dangles in the toilet water- am I at risk for addiction?