Educational Media Reviews Online

This DVD is a collage of brief biopics of persons in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction as well as of experts in the field of addiction. It is unusual in its approach because it focuses on the aspect of anonymity in recovery. In that sense it is greatly more than a simple accolade for the AA tradition. It deals with the good aspects of anonymity as well as its downside: How can a recovery program attract people to its ranks while retaining secrecy about its members? Some of the interviews elucidate the difference between anonymity and secrecy.

The statistics presented by various interviewees are disturbing: There are about 23.5 recovering addicts in the U.S., yet another 20 million at least continue down the path of self-destruction. This would rank addiction as one of the biggest health scourges in this country. The cost of dealing with the effects of addiction amounts to about 350 billion dollars a year, and only about two percent of that sum goes toward recovery efforts. Other diseases have recovery as a prominent part of treatment; only addiction lets so many slip into the legal system, where funds for escaping addiction mostly do not exist. The media focus on the “flashy” aspects of addiction as addicts destroy themselves, but when they recover, they disappear from the airwaves. And the persistence of shame around addiction makes individuals and communities reluctant to address the issue and deal with it.

This is not an academic film, but I recommend it for anyone with a high school education or more. It belongs in any public or academic library AV collection.

Awards

• 2013 Caron Advocacy Excellence Award