poledriver
Bluelighter
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- Jul 21, 2005
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Louis Theroux visits ground zero of America’s heroin epidemic in his new film, ‘Heroin Town’
IN A country that’s in the throes of a heroin epidemic, a city called Huntington in West Virginia is considered ground zero.
The statistics associated with the city of 49,000 people are shocking:
• One in four adults in Huntington are addicted to heroin or some other opiate
• One out of every 10 babies born in Huntington in 2016 was dependant on opiates
• The city has a fatal overdose rate 13 times the national average
In his new film Heroin Town, which will be released in select Australian cinemas from November 17, Louis Theroux meets addicts and those trying to help them.
Almost all of the heroin users he meets got hooked the same way. They started with legitimate pain, went to the doctor, got legal prescriptions and then got addicted. Once their prescriptions ran out, they turned to heroin, which is both cheaper and more readily available.
“It’s very heavy,” Theroux said to news.com.au about the documentary. And he’s not wrong. The scenes showing addicts injecting heroin are hard to watch, but what Theroux found even more shocking was witnessing them being revived.
“The first day we were with the fire department, you get called somewhere and you just see this guy who is lying on the ground looking blue around the lips and with a very grey face,” the 47-year-old recounted.
“They spike him with this device they all carry called Narcan [a medicine that blocks the effects of opioids and reverses an overdose] and seeing the person come back to life, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before or since.”
What he found just as shocking was the reaction of the addicts once they were brought back to life by the paramedics.
“Whereas I had thought they might have said, ‘Thanks for saving my life,’ it was quite the reverse,” Theroux said.
“The feeling was like, ‘You bastards! Now I have to go and score again because you just ruined my high.’
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...n/news-story/32fd9d949526913a7251508806548fad
IN A country that’s in the throes of a heroin epidemic, a city called Huntington in West Virginia is considered ground zero.
The statistics associated with the city of 49,000 people are shocking:
• One in four adults in Huntington are addicted to heroin or some other opiate
• One out of every 10 babies born in Huntington in 2016 was dependant on opiates
• The city has a fatal overdose rate 13 times the national average
In his new film Heroin Town, which will be released in select Australian cinemas from November 17, Louis Theroux meets addicts and those trying to help them.
Almost all of the heroin users he meets got hooked the same way. They started with legitimate pain, went to the doctor, got legal prescriptions and then got addicted. Once their prescriptions ran out, they turned to heroin, which is both cheaper and more readily available.
“It’s very heavy,” Theroux said to news.com.au about the documentary. And he’s not wrong. The scenes showing addicts injecting heroin are hard to watch, but what Theroux found even more shocking was witnessing them being revived.
“The first day we were with the fire department, you get called somewhere and you just see this guy who is lying on the ground looking blue around the lips and with a very grey face,” the 47-year-old recounted.
“They spike him with this device they all carry called Narcan [a medicine that blocks the effects of opioids and reverses an overdose] and seeing the person come back to life, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before or since.”
What he found just as shocking was the reaction of the addicts once they were brought back to life by the paramedics.
“Whereas I had thought they might have said, ‘Thanks for saving my life,’ it was quite the reverse,” Theroux said.
“The feeling was like, ‘You bastards! Now I have to go and score again because you just ruined my high.’
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/entertainmen...n/news-story/32fd9d949526913a7251508806548fad
