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Private Notes
As a child, Tammy, 26, was forced to look after her younger sisters when her parents would disappear for days on drug binges. A daddy’s girl, she has followed in her father’s footsteps, spending her days in crack houses, where she regularly descends into a world of drugs and danger. After protecting her little sisters from the hell that was their life, they have now come together in a heartbreaking attempt to save hers.
An Alberta prairie boy, Kent, 37, watched his father come home every day to a case of beer. Good at hockey, Kent’s life took a turn when a hereditary blood disease stopped him in his tracks. To fill the void, and to block out the untreated trauma of a sexual assault, Kent turned to a 17-beer-a-day habit. Now the home he shares with his girlfriend, Nicki, and their three children is a battleground of verbal abuse and shame. Nicki gives Kent a final ultimatum: clean up or lose your family for good.
Born addicted to opiates, Aimee, 25, is caught in the same cycle of addiction that took her mother’s life when Aimee was a little girl. Suffering through a childhood of neglect and a string of abusive boyfriends, Aimee’s feelings of worthlessness have led her to a serious fentanyl addiction and a life on the street soliciting men to pay for her habit. Her father, who lives in fear that he will have to bury his daughter as he did her mother, makes one final desperate bid to save her life.
A talented dancer, Lyndsay won many awards and was accepted into a prestigious arts school as a child. But in her early teens, her father's suicide triggered a spiral that she is still lost in. After being prescribed oxycontin for anxiety in her late teens, Lyndsay is now injecting over 1000mg of oxy a day. Living at home with her mother, stepfather, and 12-year-old sister, her life is completely run by the constant need for more pills and all her family can do is watch helplessly from the sidelines. Without an intervention, there is tragedy in this family’s future.
Wes and Lise have been together since their teens. Both products of traumatic childhoods, they bonded over a mutual interest in marijuana and other recreational drugs. But they were functional, with Wes earning money as a roofer to keep their two young sons in food and shelter. When, at age 30, Wes discovered crack and brought it home to Lise, their happy home turned to chaos. Hopelessly ensnared by their addictions, the couple’s focus shifted from caring for their children to finding and using that next rock. Deeply concerned for the children’s welfare, Wes’s sister Carrie makes one last attempt to save the family.
With a University degree in science, Katie is an intelligent young woman with a dangerous addiction to opiates. Raised by her mother after her alcoholic father left home, Katie refused to live in poverty and sued both parents for child support at the age of 16. The scars never healed between her and her mother who fight every day. Now 24, Katie is addicted to injecting Dilaudid. To protect her habit, she has burned her bridges with almost everyone she knows. Her mother is all she has left and, without a successful intervention, even she is prepared to walk away.
Jessica is a self-proclaimed party girl with a serious addiction to heroin. Having never dealt with the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, Jessica has been partying since she was 14. Now 22, she spends her days on methadone to stave off withdrawals, and nights injecting heroin, smoking crack and partying with men twice her age. With an alcoholic but well-meaning father who is unable to let his little girl go, and a mother who spoils her rotten, this family needs a serious wake-up call before they lose Jessica forever.
Raised by an alcoholic single mother, Travis, 20, and his sister were moved around the country after their abusive father left the household. When Travis was 15, his sister, with whom he had a strong bond, was gang raped at a party. A year later, he discovered her hanging by the neck in their home. Racked with guilt and devastated by the loss, Travis has spiraled out of control in a ceaseless sea of partying, gambling and alcohol. His mother, several years sober but clearly still suffering from her loss, now fights to save her only remaining child.
The son of an alcoholic father and a mother who suffered from depression, Ziggi grew up ‘odd’ and was alienated in the schoolyard. His sensitive, artistic temperament drew the love of a beautiful woman and they had two children together. But that same tortured soul also led him to a severe addiction to crystal meth and GHB. Unable to give it up, Ziggi has lost the girl and is living couch to couch. Without an intervention, his children will be lost to him forever.
The victim of serial abuse at the hands of a male family friend, Meghan endured a tortured childhood compounded by the fact her mother was too depressed to raise her. When she became too old to stay in the foster home that became her only happy refuge, Meghan found herself on the streets. Now 20, she seeks to ease the pain through her music, poetry and a 4-points-a-day heroin habit. Without an intervention, this artist will die before anyone truly hears her song.
At the age of 16, Holley witnessed her mother cheating on the father she adored. The strain between mother and daughter never eased and Holley, now 28, acted out through raging alcohol and cocaine abuse. An important member of a loving extended family, Holley’s relatives watched in horror as she gave birth to and raised three children in the dangerous fog of addiction. Her family must now act -- to save the children from their mother, and their mother from almost certain death.
Raised by two hard-partying parents, Sarah, 32, began using drugs as a teen. When her parents divorced, her drug use escalated and continued through failed relationships with three different men with whom she had children. Now, she has lost custody of all three and her family must help raise them while Sarah spirals into a dangerous dependence on hyrdromorphone, speed, cocaine and morphine. Without an intervention Sarah’s family fears she is one needle away from an early grave.
The daughter of a professional escort and a serial workaholic, Allisha began to develop body image issues at an early age. A bulimic who didn’t purge, but rather shed calories through compulsive and extreme workouts, Allisha soon found herself displaying her hard body in local strip clubs. Pain from dancing led to severe abuse of alcohol and opiates. Now she is impossibly addicted to injecting Dilaudid and must play multiple men to pay for her habit. For the first time in years, her family has come together in one final effort to save her life.
David, 32, has barely known a life that didn’t include addiction. His mother was a cocaine addict and his father, who struggled with alcoholism, died at an early age when David was a child. Once a provincial Taekwondo champion, family tragedy, including the death of his stepfather by overdose, has led David to a dangerous addiction to heroin and crystal meth. While his mother and much of his family have been in recovery for years, without an intervention, David is destined to be the next family casualty.
