Author Makes Recovery Movie
A year and a half ago, I started a website called Ilovequitters.com to open the discussion about addiction and recovery to a mainstream audience. I had no idea how big the story is. Addiction is the number 1 health issue in America, and is an epidemic world wide as well. Our work to tell the recovery story quickly got bigger than our site's ability to tell it. Ilovequitters shut down this week for a major overhaul. It will return as recoverme.com in the fall. Oh, yes. And the crime writer is writing a new book and making movies.
And there is a reason that my daughter Lindsey, co-producer and co-writer with me on The Secret World of Recovery and blogger on Ilovequitters, and I are entering the recovery world to make our films. We know firsthand how hard it is to carry the burden of secrecy while dealing with a disease no one wants to talk about. I had done it before with the cancer of both my parents in a time when there was no support for cancer victims. With recovery twenty years later, it was harder, and even lonelier. I was the parent of a recovering addict, and didn't know what to do to be a better parent to her and take care of myself.
These days people are proud to be cancer survivors. It should be the same for recovering addicts, but it is not. Support for cancer and other diseases has become a national obsession, but support for recovery is largely an underground secret many people are afraid to explore. The wreckage of addiction costs the nation $45o billion dollars a year, but little of that money goes to treatment, prevention, research and help for families. When it comes to recovery every family is on its own.
Most people don't know how to identify addiction in their loved ones, or that recovery is even possible. Lindsey and I are now using the power of film to bring hope and dignity to millions of people who are stigmatized by the disease and need to see that they are courageous heroes, too.
Last summer we made The Secret World of Recovery, a feature documentary about recovery in America. It also tells our own journey of recovery. The first screening was a community outreach event at the Sarasota Film Festival on April 10th. The festival organizers were astounded, and no one was more surprised than we were, when a sold out audience of 1650 people of all ages jammed the Center of Performing Arts to see the film, and to give it a standing ovation.
In the coming months the Secret World of Recovery will be shown at international film festivals, community and corporate events, and for addiction professionals. Lindsey and I are writing a book and working on our feature comedy, Rehab Is For Quitters. This summer we are filming a new documentary about teens from 13-19. Stay tuned for news.
