Michael Venn

We cannot arrest our way out of this.

Every headline in every newspaper was about Heroin.

It’s sons, daughters, friends, people that you know and people that you don’t expect.

I wanted to tell real people’s, real stories and a lot are in recovery and some of them are not. I wanted it to have that really personal feeling.

I wanted to make the audience really like and to know these people and their stories and know them as people because I think that’s the first way of breaking that stigma.

I really wanted to make the choice of going outside that box by showing people as they are today.

You are forced to look at them as a human being in a real story.

Everybody that is in the film is identifiable to everybody.

If we are ever going to beat this disease and really challenge it, and really look at this, I think we need to destigmatize this and have open discussions and have people who are in recovery say it was really difficult but I’ve made it through.

This is a disease, an addition, we need to do the right thing.