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What does it mean to be a "functioning" alcoholic? How does it feel to struggle with substance abuse day after day? What keeps addicts from truly recovering? This program explores such questions from a range of unconventional viewpoints, creating an honest look at addiction that avoids judgmental or strictly clinical approaches. At the center of the film is Jimmy, a 41-year-old surfer who describes the drinking problem he has had since age 13. The...
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Ten years ago, Merrill Jackson stole Cadillacs and helped his fellow heroin addicts shoot up-behavior that earned him the nicknames "Seville" and "The Doctor." This ABC News program explores the extraordinary transformation that took place in Jackson's life after he met Joann Muller, an activist Christian minister and mother of five from the suburbs of Philadelphia. Through one-on-one interviews and extensive footage from Jackson's drug-dealing days,...
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Produced for police orientation and training, this film presents drug addiction not simply as a crime but as a deep-seated social problem. With dramatized sequences of addicts in shooting galleries and excellent footage of pre-renewal downtown Los Angeles, a neighborhood now lost.
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Can the exploding drug trade be stemmed in the face of a rising demand in the U.S. and Europe and political accommodations and economic realities in producer countries? This program studies the drug industry in Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Burma, where UN crop substitution programs are thwarted by governments unwilling or unable to crack down on drug production and by drug lords who use incentives and coercion to increase drug crop yields....
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Experts are increasingly focusing on prevention efforts based on community and family. This documentary looks at two of those efforts. One works with parents addicted to heroin by teaching them how to repair the damage to family wrought by drug abuse, and in spite of it, how to raise strong, resilient children. In a second program, vigilant counselors in Dade County schools watch for kids at risk of becoming drug addicts, and offer immediate counseling...
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David Graham Scott has been addicted to drugs for nearly 20 years, or as he puts it, "four on heroin and the rest on methadone." Filmed by Scott himself over a five-year period, this emotionally charged documentary follows his double life as a heroin abuser and filmmaker, his pattern of deceit with his family, his battle to conquer methadone, and the fight to finally beat his addiction. His desperation to overcome drugs causes him to risk all on an...
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While addiction may cause similar changes in the brains of different people, recovery is a very individual solution. Changing behavior is the aim of treatment, but no single treatment program will work for all addicts. This program visits the Ridgeview Institute near Atlanta to interview recovering addicts and sit in on a group therapy session. Mr. Moyers also visits Project SAFE, an innovative treatment program that reaches out to disadvantaged mothers...
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Aided by powerful new diagnostic tools, scientists are making dramatic discoveries about how addiction affects the brain. In this program, Moyers goes into the laboratory to follow researchers engaged in charting an "image of desire" in the brain. We actually see images of a cocaine user's brain as the drug takes effect, and a doctor explains how these scans reveal addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease. Moyers observes a genetic researcher...
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Whether it's caffeine, nicotine, or morphine, drugs of choice have defined our lives and history, with sometimes benevolent, sometimes tragic results. This program focuses on the history of America's drug use and abuse, from the days when the early European settlers became enamored of tobacco, through Prohibition, and up to today. The problems we see today existed in other forms and with other drugs throughout our history. The reasons for using drugs...
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This ABC News Turning Point examines the increasing prevalence of heroin among today's teenagers and its devastating effects on users, their families, and their communities. Focusing on youths in Orlando, Florida, the program follows the lives of two teenage friends, both heroin addicts. One, an honor student, dies of a heroin overdose. Drug counselors discuss the difficulties in treating addicts because of the extreme euphoria produced by the drug....
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Nothing reveals the dangers of drug addiction more accurately than honesty. In this intense program, filmmaker Paul Perrier interviews a family friend, crack cocaine-addicted Lisa, in her dingy hotel room where she prostitutes herself to earn the money she needs to buy drugs. Although she grew up in a middle-class family, attended good schools, and had well-behaved friends, Lisa began drinking alcohol and using illegal drugs in her early teens. She...
13) Godforsaken
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In Karachi, Pakistan's poverty-stricken port city, organized criminals peddle heroin to the weak and vulnerable, while corrupt government officials line their pockets. Half a million heroin addicts, many of them children, are left to live in squalor on the streets, often prostituting themselves for money. Ignored by the government and ostracized by their communities, they are an underclass that this religious society would rather ignore.
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This concise explanation of alcoholism combines expert commentary with one family's experience. A sober alcoholic, his wife, and their daughter discuss the progression of his alcoholism and its devastating impact on their lives. Experts explain how family members often act as enablers, unintentionally making it easier for the alcoholic to keep drinking. Finally, the program addresses treatment options for alcoholics and sources of support for families....
15) Unborn addicts
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Drug abuse is generally considered a victimless crime, but research shows that a disturbing number of babies are born each year addicted to drugs. This program presents case studies of two pregnant women, lifelong addicts, who have entered Methadone programs. We follow the women throughout their pregnancies and deliveries. Remarkably, Natricia delivers a baby who is drug-free, but 18 hours after birth, Kim's daughter must be given opium to relieve...
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Set in the Canadian addiction treatment center of Edgewood, this program explores the private world of substance abuse rehabilitation through the eyes of six addicts and their families. Despite varied backgrounds, the goal of these patients is to turn their backs on substance dependence by facing their addiction and to arrive clean and sober to Cake Night, the monthly celebration of recovery. The impact of addiction on the family, the concept of dependency...
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There are over 23 million Americans addicted to alcohol or other drugs, with devastating consequences not only for the addicts and their families, but also for the nation as a whole. This program explains current research into why people become addicted, what puts them at risk, and what the best treatments may be. The program profiles an individual who was an alcoholic and has gone through the process of recovery.
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Is the war on drugs in the U.S. causing greater societal harm than the problem of drug abuse itself? This provocative program features interviews with Bruce Benson and David Rasmussen, co-authors of Illicit Drugs and Crime; Eric Sterling, former Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee; Joanne Page, director of the Fortune Society; and others. Together they indict flawed initiatives that have made criminal forfeitures into a cash cow, private corrections...
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The story of how our society meets the challenge of translating what scientists, doctors, counselors, and recovering addicts have learned into rational public policy is complex and sometimes contradictory. This program looks at Arizona's struggle to find an alternative to established drug-related policies. Proposition 200 proposed a reassessment of the status of nonviolent drug addicts now serving time, and emphasized treatment over incarceration....