Elaine Sheldon is an American filmmaker who centers much of her work around the opioid crisis. Her documentary “Heroin(e)” was nominated for an Academy Award and won an Emmy. This award-winning documentary follows the lives of three women, a firefighter, a judge, and a community organizer, who are working to fix the opioid epidemic in Huntington, West Virginia. She recently released “Recovery Boys,” a documentary that follows the lives of four men undergoing opioid rehabilitation.
SS: Huntington is the overdose capital of the United States. How representative is Huntington of rural America and America in general?
ES: Huntington is in a tri-state and tri-city region which is what makes it a severe case. You have a drug trade that runs straight through them for three states — Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia — so there is just a lot of movement of drugs in Huntington and it’s been that way through all of our drug epidemics. The problem with that situation is that you have a community that does have some economic engine with Marshall University but largely is a post-industrial town. It’s a steel town, a town that was processing coal, that is trying to reinvent itself. But it is in the midst of this large area where drugs are traded.
SS: Overdose deaths are often described as “deaths of despair.” Do you think this is an accurate way to describe the factors driving addiction?
ES: It’s a complicated term. I don’t think it’s an inaccurate term, but it might oversimplify to make people think this is just a problem among people living in poverty when the fact is addiction is something that can impact all races, gender, and socioeconomic classes. The problem is that people who are living in impoverished areas, despite what race or culture they are from, are often more subject to drugs being within their community because of a lack of opportunity. For a long time this epidemic in West Virginia was seen as a “hillbilly problem.” People had this stereotype of a “pill billy” when I was growing up in West Virginia. Then it hit places like Connecticut, and other places with upper middle class folks. Deaths of despair can reach across socioeconomic boundaries. Ultimately, opium and opiates make people feel good. They make people forget that pain whether that is emotional trauma or physical pain. I think that in society we certainly have a lot of legal opioids, like technology, which make us forget our pains. I would say deaths of despair are something America should be looking at along with the death of manufacturing and the death of industry. I think that when people can’t support themselves and their families, they are often driven into depression.
SS: In your 2017 documentary, you follow the lives of three women. What was your reasoning behind choosing to document their work?
ES: We wanted to find people on-the-ground doing day-to-day actions to combat this crisis. So we first met Jan Rader who is the first female fire chief in West Virginia. She actually introduced us to many people all across Huntington, and that’s because Jan is an extremely humble person. She is extremely community-minded, and Huntington is a close-knit community. The people there work together better than any West Virginia community I’ve seen. They have the ability to put aside their ego and see the potential to make things better if they all work together. Jan, immediately upon meeting us, was trying to deflect attention off of herself and onto others. Two of those people were Judge Keller and Necia Freeman who runs her own missionary at night time out in Huntington. We didn’t go to Huntington looking for women; we just happened to find these different women who work at different levels of society. They touch the same people, whether Jan is reviving them, or Necia is helping them get into rehab, or Judge Keller is helping them get a second chance after they’ve relapsed once again. We wanted to see [the epidemic] at different levels. There’s plenty of male people in Huntington that could have been featured, but I’m a West Virginia woman. I grew up in a family of really strong women, and I feel like there’s been a stereotype for a long time of southern or appalachian women taking a back seat to men, and that’s certainly not the case in my family. My mother and all the people in my family have been strong female leads in my life, so it was really exciting when we found these three women. They represent that same experience that I had growing up in West Virginia.
SS: Do you think that communities similar to Hungtington can take lessons away from Keller and the other women, especially in terms of how they interact with individuals struggling with addiction?
ES: The three women in my film have an incredible capacity for empathy and understanding. It’s very easy for most people to write off people who are suffering from addiction or substance abuse disorder. What they can take from these three women is the fact that they are standouts in their community. They have chosen to take a stand that, initially, was not popular. However, they knew it was for the betterment of society and humanity. They basically go about their day looking at how they can help people, and I don’t think most of us do that. They’re pretty exceptional people, but I think there are exceptional people in every community. I think every American community has these three women. They may act in different capacities, but they do what they can do to help people survive and get by.
You know some people are like, “oh what can I do to help. This is such an insurmountable mess that we’re in.” I understand that it’s overwhelming, but it’s really just about kindness and acceptance. If you’re a person who knows how to open a bank account and balance a checkbook, that’s something that someone who is coming out of prison or jail needs to learn. If you’re a woman who can teach other women how to prepare for a job interview, that’s something they need to learn. We all have something we can give to help people transition back into life, and to overcome addiction and incarceration. Anyone who says they’re exempt from the problem is lying to themselves. Addiction is a community problem. It’s not an isolated, individual problem.
SS: At one point, Jan Rader shares that she fears America has “lost a couple of generations” to addiction. What is this epidemic doing to our younger generations?
ES: It really is like three generations or more now that have been impacted. What’s most important is that the kids know they have options. The problem is we’re still in that “just say no,” “D.A.R.E” mentality in this country. We’re not really thinking about ways to actually make kids resilient, and to make them want to live teenage lives free from heroin abuse.You can see models of how that’s done in places like Iceland, which has incorporated mandatory art classes and dance classes that keep kids active. We don’t have those things in Appalachia. We don’t have those things in West Virginia! A lot of kids are going home from the bus to encounter drugs at home. While they might not be using them, they’re around them, and they’re normalized to them. We are at a very critical moment in which we have to teach kids resilience, and it’s not something I’ve seen anyone really crack a code on. It does scare me … a kid growing up with so much stress and trauma is a frightening thing, because that trauma affects their decision making. They’re going on to make decisions that hurt them.
SS: What changes can be made at the federal level to support communities like Hungtinon?
ES: It’s a really good question, and I don’t know if I have the answer to it. I think that someone like Necia Freeman would say we need social workers and mental health counselors in the school system, that we need a mandate that is not about reprimanding kids to not use drugs. Instead, we must teach them to be more resilient. We must not place all the weight on teachers who are already underpaid and overworked. We have a whole generation of West Virginia kids growing up without parents, and the school system is responsible for them. I think there needs to be some sort of effort to make sure that their mental health needs are met. If not, they’re going to follow the same path as their parents. We must address their trauma. Judge Keller would say there’s clearly a problem if someone has completed a two-year drug court stint, yet they still carry a felony record. Because of that record, maybe they cannot get a job! She would argue that there needs to be a strong effort to look at how we are treating non-violent drug offenders. Jan Rader would advocate for first responders to have their own form of counselling. We need to recognize that the people on the frontlines are also experiencing this trauma. There’s an incredible amount of compassion-fatigue, induced by reviving the same people over and over again.
I honestly don’t think anything President Trump can do is going to change what’s happening in Huntington. What they can do on the national level is empower the local people to do what’s right. Opioid solutions in each community look really different, whether it’s rural or in a city. It should be left up to the people on the ground, the first responders, the judges, the people that are directly compassionate and empathetic. I think any national policy in this country is not going to address the nuance of this epidemic. How do you make a policy that fits both Huntington and Los Angeles? I like to look to the grassroots, and just say that locally we can make a lot of difference. First, though, communities need some funding to actually support comprehensive rehabilitation.
SS: You’ve said that we need more stories of hope in regards to addiction. Why are these stories important to tell?
ES: It’s important to share hope because there is so little of it. When people watch any issue related to this on the news, they don’t see anything but a mug shot and a needle and spoon. And what does that give them to take away? Certainly, any issue can be painted as one that’s wholly negative, but there’s also a lot of people who have come out on the other side. Addiction is portrayed in a very stark … poverty-porn, drug-porn way, or with overly rose colored glasses where everything is fixed. Hope for me is that place in between where we are very real and very honest about what we’re up against.
What I’m seeing in the media is that there’s this overwhelming pessimism around like “we can’t do anything to change it,” or an optimism of “we fixed it because this one person is in recovery.” The reality is, this is a lifelong change for most people in recovery. They’re going to be fighting this everyday of their lives. The fact that they get up everyday and do that, including these three women, gives me hope. When I had lost several friends, friends who had gone to rehab and relapsed, I needed hope so I went out looking for it. I just think it’s important to remember that hope is not something we passively wish for, but something we have to actively fulfill, and that’s what these three women represent. We could have easily documented three people who were struggling with addiction, and I think that’s done quite often in the media. I do think, however, that people become numb to those images. We were really trying to make a film that gave people some steam to maybe help change their minds: help turn the corner about their thoughts on narcan, help turn the corner about their thoughts about drug court. All these things have so much stigma attached to them. I don’t think you change and get rid of that stigma by showing more people using over and over. It’s just so isolating for people who have never used, which is a lot of people who are watching this film. You have to have the cheerleaders who care deeply about people, and hopefully their voices will inspire the audience themselves to act, and think about their own communities.