Come Clean: A Sincere But Too-Narrow Look At Addiction

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-

Though promoted as a TVO original documentary, Come Clean from writer/directors Derreck Roemer and Neil Graham (Last Call at the Gladstone Hotel, The Lost Highway) is nothing like that.

Shot mostly in 2019 before the pandemic, and with no mention of the opioid crisis, the film — now streaming at TVO — is really a narrowly focused human-interest story about four people trying to change their lives in one small-town addiction treatment facility.

Julie in treatment.

It’s a film full of good intentions though perhaps more interesting for the questions it raises than the answers it gives.

The four — Bryanna, Annie, Ryan and Julie (last names aren’t given) — meet at the beginning of the year in a 19-day program at the Westover Treatment Centre, a non-medical residential facility housed in a Victorian-era mansion in Thamesville, Ontario, between London and Windsor.

There’s nothing novel in the centre’s approach, except that the counsellors are all recovering from substance abuse: “No one can understand an addict like another addict,” says one. (Is that true?)

The film doesn’t provide the nuts-and-bolts of the operation but according to its website, the centre accepts both private patients (at $7,500 for the 19-day program) and those referred to by the local health network, which is its primary funder.

The centre incorporates the 12-step program and group meetings used by Alcoholics Anonymous since the 1930s. Apart from not using their last names, though, the subjects of the film are obviously not anonymous. I wish the film had gone a little deeper into how the subjects were chosen and why they and the centre agreed to give the filmmakers access.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

The new residents are told by program director Mike Hannon that addiction is a disease. “Cancer, diabetes and addiction are all chronic, progressive and fatal diseases.”

Though the disease model of addiction treatment is widely accepted, it’s not without controversy among neuroscientists (see these arguments for and against arguments). The filmmakers and counsellors use the word “addict” as opposed to the more politically correct “persons with substance abuse disorder.”

The treatment centre also holds the view that addiction is a consequence of the shame of childhood trauma, though that’s not clear in every case presented here.

“Did your parents demonstrate anger when you were a child?” one counsellor asks in group, which seems a little like asking if your parents were human beings.

There’s an evangelical resonance to the Westover approach. Every day an addict doesn’t use is a “miracle” and getting better involves a full conversion experience. Counsellor Laird Brush says that an addict can stay clean by changing one thing: “Everything. The way you think, the way you feel, the way you behave, where you work.”

Since that sounds impossible for most people, even with 19 days preparation, it’s of interest to see how the four are tested as they go out in the world, but with some ethical reservations. Is it fair to put emotionally vulnerable people to this kind of public scrutiny, even if their examples may encourage empathy for their struggle?

That said, they’re a likeable group, who show a considerable degree of self-awareness. Ryan is a young man who dealt and used drugs since he was 14. He’s cocky and funny, and you could see him running his own legit business some day.

Instead, he gives up a certain level of popularity and status as a drug dealer when he’s forced to live at his aunt’s house and take a job gutting chickens while wearing an ankle monitor. You can predict that, without any opportunity for healthy rewards, this is going to be a struggle, and also hard on his loving mom.

Bryanna, an unhappy young woman in her third round of rehab, is labelled as a disruptive presence during the 19-day residency; a counsellor calls her an emotional 12-year-old in an adult body. But after some setbacks, she does what Ryan can’t do: she changes her circumstances. She cuts her hair, takes her guitar, and moves to Toronto and gets a job she enjoys as a line cook in a kitchen. I hope the pandemic didn’t put her out of work.

Julie, who was sexually abused as a minor, said she wanted to be a better mother to her now-adult children. She’s back to her job at a Windsor car factory without the daily bump of cocaine. Life’s not perfect but she’s happy that she makes more money when she doesn’t call in sick so often.

Annie, a customer service rep, said she had multiple addictions, must face adjustments in her marriage, as she goes to AA meetings and he heads to the bar or, as he puts it, “While she’s at AA, I’m at A.” The situation is ultimately not sustainable but, in the end, it’s a rather hopeful love story.

The film’s narrow focus implies a one-size-fits-all to addiction treatment to people with different levels of addiction, different levels of family and friends support and motives to change. Although audiences will relate to the individual stories better than a film based on statistics and studies, a broader more journalistically grounded examination of the contemporary substance abuse phenomenon would carry far more weight.

Come Clean. Directed by Derreck Roemer and Neil Graham. Now airing on TVO.org, YouTube and other TVO streaming channels.