Dope Sick Love - For the Love of God, Don't Watch It

I have been riveted by A&E’s Intervention, the documentary style television show that follows various addicted people around and then surprises them with an intervention that the show has helped their friends and families stage. Although it has come under fire for being exploitative (one outraged critic called it ‘an emotional snuff film’), I find it fascinating, educational and cautionary, especially in the ways it exposes how families and friends inadvertently support the addict’s disease. I thought I would also enjoy watching the documentary Dope Sick Love, which chronicles the trials and tribulations a junkie faces on the streets of New York. I watched it last night and it was absolutely revolting, and unless you especially enjoy seeing needles plunging into veins covered with crusted sores, I don’t recommend it. To counteract this vile images do you know how many hours I will have to spend immersing myself in Benac.com (like I don’t already!), the website of the wholesome Mormon family I cyberstalk? This was a documentary that offered neither hope nor redemption.

The subjects of this film are two couples as they con, scam, thieve, lie, bicker, prostitute themselves, and search for a viable vein, all of which they do in a hideous New York accent, which I found made the whole experience even harder to endure. One of the women, screeching after her life partner during a quarrel and then whining and crying because her needle is too dull to pierce her vein (her boyfriend selfishly took the ‘good’ needle), sounded just like a strung out Joan Rivers. Nancy Spungun lives! Another delightful scene involves one of them cleaning his syringe in a commode and then loading it up and sticking it in his vein. His body is a temple!

I am curious to know why the junkies never go to the NYPL to fix. Instead, they spend a lot of time trying to break into apartment and office buildings to shoot up in the stairwells. Perhaps under the new order established by Giuliani the librarians are empowered enough to enforce the rules and there is a zero tolerance for that sort of behavior, which flourishes and is done with impunity in this city and elsewhere.