What Happened to Frankie Face on Dopesick Nation

Centre-opening and damning, "American Relapse" is a blunt force look at the "bicycle" of opioid habit and the ways this American epidemic has been monetized by those with an eye towards making a buck out of whatsoever bad matter that happens.

Fittingly, Pat McGee and Adam Linkenhelt's documentary begins with a quote by The Ultimate Capitalist — John D. Rockefeller.

"The Way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets."

Artfully shot and cleverly edited, "Relapse" turns its lens on Delray Beach, Florida, "The Rehab Capital of America." And past focusing on ii exceptional, compassionate and "involved" "junkie hunters" — essentially street-level "marketers" who notice addicts and try to get them aid — the film points both to the commitment of the few and the opportunities for abuse past many others in a system that has been feeding on itself for over a decade.

Allie Severino is a 28 year-old recovering addict, a perfectly fabricated-up and coiffed blonde driving effectually South Florida, which has become a magnet for heroin addicts thanks to the 1200 or more rehab facilities that have opened in the region, looking for junkies she tin help become off the street.

The neighborhoods are sketchy, and many of the people she is looking for are passing out nether bridges, in clumps of forest behind supermarkets. Severino notes that it's "my job to exist here," just that as an ex-aficionado, she's still into the "thrill seeker" part of the work.

Cheers to changes in health care laws that care for addiction as a disease and a "pre-existing condition," there's money to be made — from insurance companies, from Medicaid. People like Allie can earn up to $two,000 commission for getting an addict into detox.

Frankie Holmedue south is 38, wearing the scars of his years of habit on his face. Piercings tin't hide the burns.

"My phone never stops ringing," he says of those, like him, who are calling him for help, men and women "living in active addiction." He's just an addict "without the drugs," he freely admits. His new addictions include the adrenaline rush of tracking down addicts, pitching them on the thought of getting help and at least putting the choice to get sober in front end of them.

"I'm non f—–g cured, past any ways."

Knowing that 90% of addicts relapse is one reason Frankie refers to Delray Beach not as "the Rehab upper-case letter of America," only as the "Relapse Capital." And that fact is why then many under-supervised facilities have opened at that place, "detox centers" and "sober houses," hospitals and out-patient treatment facilities.

Allie and Frankie freely speak about the coin to be made off these unfortunates, because they're above that. Their hearts and motives, near as we can tell, are pure and altruistic. Just it'southward a system, "The Florida Model," gear up to be abused, to be commodified.

"The Florida Model" or "Cycle of Recovery"  breaks down the process of treating an aficionado into segments of a "business organisation," each able to charge insurers top dollar for their services. It runs from "Detox" to "Partial Hospitalization" to "Intensive Outpatient" to "Sober Living Facility."

Every bit Obamacare left it to states to administer this new constabulary, states similar Florida allowed cities like Delray Beach to become an insurance scam capital letter.

This festival accolade-winning film, which inspired the Vice Idiot box series "Dopesick Nation," lays out– with graphics, repurposed vintage documentaries explaining "commercialism" and our two tour guides into this underworld — just how this self-feeding monster is fed and who is making money at every footstep of the process.

Simple "pee tests," which every facility calls for repeatedly, run into thousands of dollars. Detox costs coin, long term care costs more, and on and on down the line.

Facilities have encouraged "junkie hunters" to pay insurance premiums on addicts then that they're worth luring into the "the Florida Model."

Recovery Centers and drug testing facilities are experiencing a "gold blitz," and yeah, the urine testing is an apt visual metaphor for that — $3500 per cup.

"Testing positive means staying in treatment," thus the over-testing, giving addicts money to buy drugs so that they test positive and the insurance money keeps rolling in.

"If there's money to be fabricated off an addict, there are people downwards here doing it," Frankie gripes.

Every bit much every bit $120,000 can be earned, per addict, every three months.

But Frankie and Allie are dissimilar. We see him reason with, debate and never surrender on this or that addict who "gets into my auto" but resists breaking out of "the life." We witness a late night "sober firm" shouting lucifer betwixt Allie, trying to get a couple (who have relapsed so ofttimes nobody else will touch on them) off the streets, and the manager, some other ex-addict who isn't falling for their act THIS time.

"How many times did YOU relapse?" she shouts at him.

"How many times did You lot relapse?" he shouts dorsum.

The filmmakers built the moving picture out of a long weekend where they follow the 2 hunters (who don't work together), using split screens, in-auto "counseling" sessions, visits to flops and flop houses, getting in the faces of the addicts Allie and Frankie are trying to help.

"This illness wants u.s. Dead," Frankie tells one and all.

And still, here'due south a guy shooting upwardly in his talocrural joint like the adept that he is — "iii or four years" into habit, dully answering Frankie's battery of questions — "Have you lost a lot of friends out here? You got a place to stay this evening?"

It's easy to see how this film inspired the Boob tube series — it opens tin afterward tin of worms, inviting further storytelling — and it's going to be hard to wait at Delray Beach, with its sand, beach, condos, drawbridges, yachts and heroin junkies, the same fashion again.

"American Relapse" opens with the duo making their rounds, hunters into the "blitz" of hunting for people to help, and ends with a funeral. In between, co-directors McGee and Linkenhelt give us a lot to chew on about this self-manufactured crisis, even if the film never quite builds the empathy that mayhap the follow-up series managed.

MPAA Rating: unrated, graphic scenes of drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Allie Severino, Frankie Holmes

Credits: Directed by Pat McGee and Adam Linkenhelt. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:45

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Source: https://rogersmovienation.com/2019/03/19/documentary-review-junkie-hunters-fight-the-drug-scourge-one-addict-at-a-time-and-the-greedy-rehab-industry-in-american-relapse/

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