FILM REVIEW: "Dosed" is a powerful, personal, and potent exploration of addiction
Dosed is a powerful look into addiction showing how widespread the opioid crisis is in North America. No one is exempt from experiencing addiction, and addiction is not a solitary issue. It comes coupled with emotional distress, financial trouble, suicidal thoughts, displacement, familial destruction.
Director/producer Tyler Chandler follows the addiction journey of his long-time friend Adrianne. Her journey begins as a star pupil who uses cocaine, and begins using opiates to counter the effects of the cocaine. What follows for her is addiction, suicidal thoughts, and unemployment. The standard identifiers of a 'drug story' are all here, for viewers fortunate enough to remain unaffected by drug abuse to identify. However, Adrianne’s battle for sobriety touches on so many relevant tangential aspects of addiction that this documentary can serve as a potent microcosm for the issue at large.
As a recounting of real events, the focus of Dosed’s efforts is on storytelling. The cinematography is utilitarian, showing only what is needed in the moment, and the soundtrack serves a supporting role. The real star of the show is Adrianne herself. The emotion and pain on her face all throughout the film is raw, and moving. It doesn’t take long before she becomes the focal point and the most compelling aspect of the film.
Dosed managed to take a potentially “edgy” topic like drug use and treat it with the solemnity and practicality it deserves. Through the choice of language and plain and honest presentation, this documentary holds opiate addiction to the light, plain for all to see, and offers a potential, unconventional solution: psychedelic-assisted therapy using iboga and magic mushrooms (psilocybin).
Iboga is a plant medicine from West Africa that is used in traditional ceremonies and rituals to induce a near-death experience. Understandably, the main active ingredient in iboga, ibogaine, has not become a popular street drug in the west, but has found use in iboga clinics. These facilities operate in a "legal grey-area” offering the plant, in conjunction with the ceremonial aspects of the iboga ritual in a controlled environment. The intention behind these clinics is to treat addiction, which iboga has anecdotally been shown to do. Over the course of Dosed, Adrianne turns to both of these psychedelic-assisted therapies in an attempt to break her addiction.
Because the war on drugs has made the public’s attitude to substance use more black and white, any drugs outside of tobacco, alcohol is considered life-ruining and not at all recommended. As a result, treating substance dependency with more substances may seem counter-productive to some. It would be understandable to see psilocybin or iboga therapy as trading one vice for another.
However, the same argument could be made regarding suboxone and methadone clinics for opioid dependence and Antabuse for alcohol dependancy. These solutions are establishment-approved, and discussed in the film by Adrianne as a bandaid solution, making to comment that it is harder to get off methadone than street opiates. Dosed makes the case that psychedelic-assisted addiction therapy is a viable and powerful option in treating a growing epidemic of addiction.
The choice of words for communicating this, or any delicate topic, are critical to an effective discussion. It is only through shared desire to find lasting solutions to opioid addiction can open-minded policymakers begin the research into safe alternatives to the current solutions. When such programs are strongly supported by theory, then there is less resistance to policies enacting widespread action into curbing the growing addiction epidemic.
Dosed should be commended for its compelling realness and careful communication of its delicate conversation. The emotion and struggle of addiction are not shied away from, but instead captured beautifully, serving as a tool to educate the larger population.
