A LADY HOLDS a box of Narcan, which is used to reverse the effects of a drug overdose.
“Anonymous Sister” begins in the 1980s, as the close-knit Boyle family is introduced through home movie footage of their lives in the Colorado countryside. As the years tick by, the youngest family member, Jamie, is drawn to the camera in early childhood, begging to operate it at any opportunity while her older sister, Jordan, embarks on what will become a prodigious figure-skating career.
By the time she reaches her late teenage years Jamie is documenting, in excruciating detail, Jordan and her mom, Julie, as both simultaneously descend into opioid addiction while battling chronic pain.
Unbeknownst to her at the time, Jamie was capturing the reality of the opioid epidemic long before it was acknowledged or named, when it entered your home under the guise of health care, when those to whom we entrust our lives became the greatest threat to it.
Thirteen years later finds both family members sober and Jordan newly pregnant with her first child. The pregnancy will mark her first major interaction with the medical community since getting off opioids. Jamie once again picks up the camera as her mom and sister face new hurdles in their hard won sobriety. What she sees this time is not just a family, but an entire nation, in turmoil.
This documentary isn’t as comprehensive or, might I say, eye-popping, in my opinion as “Dopesick,” but it is still a cautionary tale about opioids and the havoc that their misuse and over-dosing have had all across the country.
The mom gets strung out as she is diagnosed with an illness and Jordan, an ice skater, has an accident and injury that needs more and more drugs so she can withstand the pain that she’s feeling.
When the Jamie turns to the camera for refuge, she ends up with a firsthand account of what will become the deadliest man-made epidemic in United States history.
Thirty years in the making, “Anonymous Sister” is Emmy Award®-winning director Jamie Boyle’s chronicle of her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic.
This just confirms the fact that when one family member is addicted to opioids, the entire family is affected.
And in the midst of this, the Sacklers, who are behind the Purdue Pharma drug OxyContin, are brought to task for their misrepresentation of the side effects—addictive nature—of OxyContin.
They spoke of a psuedo addiction—the belief that patients with legitimate pain that could be alleviated with opioid painkillers exhibit drug-seeking behavior that is misinterpreted as addiction.
Even pain management centers were connected to Purdue, the documentary reveals.
Catch this important documentary about a scourge on society that doesn’t seem to abate. It will be in theaters this weekend in New York and in other major cities following. Take a look at the trailer. https://youtu.be/J-ngzFIxq1o.
“It’s a masterfully told personal journal that is both insightful and deeply moving. Jamie Boyle’s incredible documentary explores the deception and corruption that created the opioid crisis, while at the same time showing a powerful portrait of a family that gets lost in the never ending cycle of addiction.”– Danny Strong, Creator and Director of “Dopesick.”
