What happens when a filmmaker records a friend at her lowest point?
In March 2024, I spoke with Paul Perrier, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, about his memoir, Cracked Wide Open. The book grows out of a documentary he shot in about an hour in a hotel room in downtown Toronto, called Crack Not Broken.
The film follows Lisa, the oldest friend of his former wife, who was selling sex to pay for crack cocaine. Paul hoped the film might help her get clean. If it did not, he wanted her story to give other people a reason to keep trying to stop.
We talked about how the film found its audience, what happened to Lisa afterward, and what he believes sits underneath most dependence. Of course, we also ended up talking about phones.
How did a film made for friends reach so many people?
At 0:21, Paul described the first screening, on September 12, 2005, at a nearby repertory theater, for family, friends, and people he had worked with. After that night, in his words, the film took on a life of its own. Months later, he and Lisa were guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
That appearance led to the film being one of four independent films included in HBO’s Addiction series in 2007.
Why is crack cocaine so hard to leave behind?
At 3:18, I said that people often joke about crack, yet it is an extremely hard thing to overcome. Opioids are far more deadly. Still, I suspected that crack may be the more difficult one to get away from, because a person does not black out. You see your life falling apart around you, very vividly.
Why did he film Lisa in the first place?
At 11:07, Paul was clear that it was never an intervention. From 12:34, he explained that Lisa had once watched a trailer he made about another friend who was using drugs, and she told him he had captured what that life was like. Before she left that evening, she said that if she ever went back to using, she would call him and he could interview her.
Six months later, she called on a weekday afternoon and asked if he wanted to come down. At 9:58, he said he brought no lights and no microphone, and he never imagined he would walk out with a film. Interestingly, his first instinct was to put the footage away for good.
Is every kind of dependence the same?
When Paul asked what kind of doctor I am, I explained at 11:26 a distinction people often miss. Some drugs, such as crack cocaine, are strongly addictive with little physical withdrawal. Opioids cause both addiction and physical dependence, while benzodiazepines mostly cause physical dependence without the addiction.
I also compared sending a person who uses crack to rehab with sending people to sanatoriums for tuberculosis before antibiotics. You hope for the best, I said, but it is not really a great medical treatment.
What did the filming reveal about the dangers Lisa faced?
At 14:38, Paul said the way Lisa was getting her drugs alarmed him more than the drugs themselves. At 15:01, I added that beyond sexually transmitted diseases, she had no way of knowing who she was letting into the room.
What happened to Lisa after the show?
At 16:24, Paul explained that a program in California had offered her two months of free care because of the film, and she had only just started it when they taped the Oprah show in Chicago. He later went out there to film a sequel and thought he had, in his words, the Hollywood ending. Unfortunately, she relapsed when she got back to Toronto.
Later in that answer, he described how she kept trying, spent a year in a long-term program, went back to school, and now lives a few blocks from him. They no longer talk.
Can a film help someone stop before crossing a line?
At 19:23, I said that people reach points where they must decide whether to cross a line they never would have crossed before, such as stealing a friend’s wallet. I hoped that seeing Lisa’s story might help someone decide that this is their bottom, and that they will go no lower.
Paul answered at 20:28 that the film did exactly that. People wrote in through the film’s website and blog, and in his words, it changed many people’s lives. In fact, he also sees the book as one for families, who have to watch someone they love be taken away.
What does trauma have to do with dependence?
At 23:39, Paul said that from what he has studied, though he is not a doctor, the real thing people have to deal with is the trauma they are trying to cover up. I agreed at 25:51 that trauma is usually underneath, and that it is not always obvious. Someone can grow up in a nice home and still suffer silently because a parent was not there or they were bullied. In his view, at 27:33, the highs of life are as dangerous as the lows.
How did I come to prescribe buprenorphine?
When Paul asked how I got into this work, I told him at 28:11 that in 2006 I went to the eight-hour course doctors once needed in order to prescribe Suboxone, and I went by accident, thinking it was a different course. It was already paid for, so I stayed, and I was intrigued.
Later in that answer, I described something I have seen many times since. Over their first month on buprenorphine, the main ingredient of Suboxone, people seem to wake up, and sometimes I barely recognize them. So, when people call it trading one drug for another, I disagree. A person goes from obsessing over a drug to feeling the way they felt before any of it started.
Is scrolling on a phone like a drug?
At 32:27, Paul explained that he released his book only in print, partly to get people off their phones for a while. He grew up before phones and home computers, and to him that was freedom.
At 34:16, I said that never-ending social media scrolling is not all that different from crack use. It is far safer. Yet the pattern of telling yourself you will stop after one more, and then one more, until hours have disappeared, is exactly the same. Paul went further at 34:42 and called it worse than any drug, since on the street he sees heads that are almost never up.
Who is Paul Perrier?
Paul Perrier is a photographer, documentary filmmaker, and author. He grew up in Montreal, moved to Toronto at 31 to pursue photography, and shot for ad agencies and magazines before digital cameras changed his field. His memoir, Cracked Wide Open, took him ten years to write, and he chose to release it only as a printed book.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
Paul’s film is a reminder that the woman in that hotel room had a family, a history, and a real story before drugs changed her. Her recovery did not come in a straight line. Yet, by his account, she kept trying, and some of the people who wrote to him after seeing her found a reason to keep trying too.
How do I approach this today?
My thinking has kept developing since this conversation was recorded. Today my practice is built on one idea that runs through all of it: when the body has adapted to a substance, the safest way off is usually gradual, with the smallest steps the person’s nervous system can tolerate. Physical dependence is not addiction.
For opioid dependence I prescribe buprenorphine, which steadies the body so a person can rebuild their life without the cycle of withdrawal. Visits are monthly, or weekly when needed. Some people stay on it for a long time, and that is a legitimate choice. Others later taper slowly, using the same gradual approach I use for every other medication.
I believe medication for opioid dependence should be available wherever people need it. I prescribe in Florida only.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (37 minutes)
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:00] Paul Perrier, welcome to the podcast. I see you have a book out, and you had made a documentary at some point on a very low budget, and I can’t wait to hear more of the story. And it really took off and got the attention of some very interesting, well-known people. So yeah, please tell us a story about that.
Paul Perrier [00:21] Okay, well, the book that I’ve written is called Cracked Wide Open. It’s a book it’s a memoir about my life as a artist a photographer and I became a documentary filmmaker and it revolves around a documentary that I shot 20 years ago called Crack Not Broken. And Crack Not Broken is a real-time documentary. It wasn’t planned. And it’s a story about my ex-wife’s oldest friend who became a prostitute to support her crack cocaine habit. And it was shot in a hotel room in downtown Toronto in an hour. And we used the film to try to help the subject get to sobriety. And if that didn’t happen, we were hoping that it would help other people. Her story would help other people inspire other people to keep trying to quit or get off drugs. Yeah. Yeah. So I screened this film for the first time in September on September 12, 2005 at a theater two blocks from here, a repertory theater. And I invited family and friends and anybody who I had worked with to come. I think about 100 people showed up and we screened the film and the subject. And I answered questions after and after that the film took on a life of its own and then almost nine months later to the day we were on the Oprah Winfrey show Lisa was and they were talking about my film or the film our film and that led to it being one of four independent films included in HBO’s Addiction series in 2007 so it went my film from you know showing it to friends went around the world and part of what my book is about is the reaction that my film that film got from people because anybody who saw it if you didn’t react to this film you’re not human in some sense had you ever heard of my film
Dr. Mark Leeds [03:18] Yeah yeah I’d heard of it I have honestly I’ve not seen the whole thing all the way through and I and I really want to watch it now I’ve seen parts of it yeah and it really yeah it does grab your attention I mean just the story because it’s, you know, I think her drug of choice is crack, right? Which I think is where the name comes from of the film. And, you know, I think people kind of joke about crack, you know, it just comes up in conversation. And it’s really an extremely tough addiction to overcome. I mean, opioids are tough. And I mean, opioids are much more deadly than crack. I mean, crack addicts seem to kind of linger around forever. Not too many people know. I mean, they die from crack overdoses and medical conditions and HIV and things like that. But for the most part, not too many people know crack addicts who have died from crack. But everybody knows an opioid addict who’s died from an opioid overdose, unfortunately. Right. But crack is probably maybe a more difficult thing to overcome. I’ve even heard, you know, in the 90s, I remember hearing someone say that a lot of crack addicts are switching over to heroin because it’s easier on them and gives them a path maybe to get into recovery. You know, it’s such a hard thing to get over. And, you know, and you just go. And I guess it’s the kind of thing where, like smoking or overeating, you just make light of it. You’re like, well, maybe I’ll quit tomorrow. But you just see. And it doesn’t it’s not like maybe like opioids or alcohol where you black out. You actually see your life falling apart around you and very vividly and you’re very aware of what’s happening. And it’s a you know, just a horrible way to descend into a life of degradation that just is very difficult to get to get out of. Yeah. So,
Paul Perrier [05:10] Yeah, I mean, I was I was really exposed to the world of addiction. And I went into it, you know, wanting to help a friend in the only way I really could, which was by using my art. And I believe that art actually plays an important role in the healing process, whether it be drugs or whatever addiction. I mean, my other thought is that we all have addictions, that we all have something that takes us away from the grim realities of the world we live in today. And mine is art. And, you know, I’ve like a drug addict. I get highs from when my work is being shown and especially influencing people or inspiring people or talking to somebody like you who, you know, I don’t know. We never met before, but you have your podcast and are trying to help people. That’s what my book’s about too. And in that book, I tell the story of my life and how I got to that room.
Dr. Mark Leeds [06:22] Wow. And if somebody were an aspiring filmmaker today and interested in becoming a filmmaker or making a career of it, would it be helpful to read your book to get started there?
Paul Perrier [06:36] Well yeah for sure it would I mean it might it might dissuade them from doing it I mean art is a hard hard thing to do you know and I’m very honest about my journey as an artist I mean it started when I was 12 years old when I took my first photograph it was a Polaroid polaroid image and I was 12 years old and when I saw that picture develop in front of my eyes this was you know long before digital imaging and stuff that was magic to me and you know I guess it’s like would have been like I don’t know hendrix picking up a guitar or something it changed my life and I’ve taken photographs since you know I’ve documented my life which is interesting because I’ve led a kind of interesting life it’s a it’s not a normal life being an artist yeah
Dr. Mark Leeds [07:44] And like has that is that like have you been able to throughout your career? Like, has that been, you’ve been able to survive as an artist, like that’s your income? I mean, because I think a lot of people love to be a professional artist and it just at times can seem impossible, especially these days where, you know, everybody is a content creator and putting stuff out there. Now we have AI and that’s terrifying everybody. But yeah, so you’ve made a career of being an artist.
Paul Perrier [08:15] Well, yeah, I made a career of being a commercial artist. I grew up in Montreal and I moved to Toronto when I was 31 years old to pursue photography. And yeah, I had a client. I was shooting for ad agencies, magazines. My photography career went further than I actually ever thought it would. But then in 2007 what we’re talking on now came out and that leveled me as a photographer it’s like because everybody could do it and do it well and you didn’t need any knowledge you could you know cameras take the these phones take amazing pictures now but you know you buy a good digital camera you just have to turn it on put it on automatic and it takes amazing pictures so that had a huge effect on my career what my career took a nosedive and it’s part of the reason why I started making documentaries because I used the same technology that was hammering me to make films and you know that’s the film we’re talking about cost me 45 to shoot
Dr. Mark Leeds [09:45] Wow and well you didn’t have there was no iphone back then right so you definitely did not but I know they had some decent cameras like pre-iPhone they had those you know you could even record to an sd card at 720p video so there was some pretty good equipment even at that time
Paul Perrier [09:58] Yeah, the camera I used was a Canon, just a regular camera. I didn’t bring lights. I didn’t bring a microphone. I didn’t go down there thinking I was shooting a film. I was going down there to interview to I knew I was recording because that’s part of the story. But I never thought that I’d walk out of there with this film, this powerful, powerful film that, you know, when I saw it, I went, OK, I have a bit of a responsibility with this. I think like my, as you read it, when you read the book, the first thing I wanted to do was just put it away and never see it again. But then I went, no, there’s a reason this happened. And I mean, I just, that’s how it evolved. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind and it still affects me to this day.
Dr. Mark Leeds [10:58] Yeah. What was your intention going? Was it for an intervention? Like where you’re going the woman’s name was lisa right and yeah so
Paul Perrier [11:07] Lisa it wasn’t an intervention at all what it was lisa was at our house so lisa had been in and out of rehab clinics which is that what you are rehab rehab doctor is that correct
Dr. Mark Leeds [11:26] Yeah usually outpatient, you know, people come to the office or we do it with telemedicine and mostly opioids, alcohol, and also benzodiazepine dependence, which is not really an addiction. It’s more of a, and that’s an interesting thing with drugs. Some drugs are very addicting, psychologically addicting. Some cause physical dependence with addiction and some cause physical dependence without addiction. So yeah, crack cocaine or regular cocaine does not have much of a physical withdrawal, but it’s very addicting. Opioids are both. Opioids are addicting and physical dependence, and the benzos are mostly just physical dependence without the addiction. So yeah, like sometimes people like just kind of think it’s all addiction, but yeah, so but yeah, for crack cocaine, it’s not, it’s kind of like tuberculosis treatment before they had the antibiotics for it, but nobody really knew what to do. So they sent people off to these sanatorium places to get some fresh air and hopefully they would get better and at least keep them away from society. So yeah, sending someone with a crack addiction to rehab is kind of like that. You hope for the best, but it’s not really a great medical treatment.
Paul Perrier [12:34] Right, right. So she had been in a bunch of treatment centers over the years and she’d get clean and then relapse when she got out. And at one point she was over at our house for dinner and she was clean she’d been clean for a couple of months I guess and she was telling us stories about her life and I asked her to look at a it was a trailer I’d made about a friend of mine who’s a very was in a very bad situation with drugs and I had been shooting videotaping him for a while and I thought I had real I thought I had captured something interesting about addiction so I asked her if she would look at the trailer and she looked at it and she said yeah you really captured what it’s like to live as an addict in society and then before she left she said if I go back in if I ever go back into it I’ll call you and you can interview me so it was six months later I get I hadn’t heard from her get this call on a I think it was a Tuesday afternoon and she just said you want to come down and interview me so I grabbed my camera and went and interviewed her I didn’t know it wasn’t for a film and it wasn’t it certainly wasn’t an intervention
Dr. Mark Leeds [13:58] Okay and yeah and I and I saw that I did see the trailer for it which is really, you know, and I recommend people look at that and that really wants, makes you want to see the film. And I think she’s talking about like pricing, you know, how, what she charges men for prostitution. And the first thing, you know, I’m thinking is like, your prices are way too low. I mean, you should be charging 10 times that or something, but I guess that’s where the addiction comes in. Is it, you know, it’s just about getting the money and probably, you know, not really thinking that through. Or I don’t know how that works out.
Paul Perrier [14:38] Yeah, I mean, I think one of my biggest concerns when I got out of there was, like, I know the dangers of drug addictions, but the dangers I saw of her, how she was getting her drugs was that was more alarming to me than anything. Like, talk about dangerous.
Dr. Mark Leeds [15:01] Oh, yeah. She was on her own. Yeah, I mean, not just the risk of sexually transmitted illnesses, diseases, and I mean, that’s a deadly thing right there. But yeah, abuse, you don’t know who you’re bringing into the room. I mean, it could be someone that’s very violent or a murderer. I mean, it’s a horrible situation to be in. And I think, you know, when people get in that situation of crack addiction, especially their entire world just becomes all about there’s money and there’s crack and I need to find a way to put them together without the police getting in the way of it. And there’s really not much more to your thinking than that.
Paul Perrier [15:44] Yeah, I mean, she was a different person than the person I had met when I first moved to Toronto. You know, drugs had really changed her. And it was sad and it’s painful to watch and it’s painful to live through. And drugs and addiction, they tear people apart.
Dr. Mark Leeds [16:07] Yeah. Did she, I remember reading that at the Oprah show that she had, I think, 16 days clean at that point. Did she ever have any long-term success after that, or what happened after that?
Paul Perrier [16:24] Yeah, so when she appeared on Oprah, she had just started a two-month program in California. Because of the film, a treatment center in California offered her two months of free treatment. And so while she was there, we got this opportunity to be on Oprah. It had been going on for a while, but it finally came up. And they said, you know, if you’re going to do it’s got to be this time, this show. So we somehow pulled it together. And she was 16 days clean when she got there. Then she went back after right after the show to because the show was taped in chicago and she went right back to the treatment center finished her two months in california then I went out to at that point we were shooting a sequel documentary because because my concept was that I’m interested to see if this film can actually help a person get to sobriety. And it was, like it was, it had changed her life and she was, you know, making media appearances. Now, all these things are hard too, like there’s a whole lot going on there so Lisa was really brave to do all of this but when she after California we came like I went out there shot some stuff of her and some of the doctors who had treated her there and I thought we had I thought it was the Hollywood ending literally the Hollywood ending to this incredible story and then when she got back to Toronto she relapsed again and then you know kept trying kept going back she finally went into a long-term treatment center outside of Toronto for a year and then went back to school and came back to Toronto and she lives in Toronto now and she lives a couple of blocks from me. We don’t talk anymore if we haven’t for a long time. I think the film and I assume the book might, I’m not sure she’s happy with it, but again, I had never finished what I had set out to do, which was to inspire people to try to quit their addiction.
Dr. Mark Leeds [19:23] Yeah. So she is alive and well and successful in her recovery probably for many years, as far as we know. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s inspiring. And if that film and your book can help people maybe skip over some of that, the horrors of what can happen and addiction. I mean, because I think people get to certain points where they have to make a decision. Are they going to cross a certain line and be willing to do something that they were never willing to do before? And you have to make that decision. Do I steal my friend’s wallet or do I go to get help and go to a meeting or go to rehab? Or does someone make the decision to go into prostitution or say that’s a line I’m just not going to cross? And, you know, maybe looking at your work, at your film and reading your book, that could help someone to, you know, make that decision, make the right decision and say, you know, that’s a line I really can’t cross. And I’m going to make that, you know, the final. That’s my bottom. I’m not going any lower than that.
Paul Perrier [20:28] Well yeah and it totally did it achieved that because what my book chronicles is the journey of the film and the responses I got from it and literally there were people who wrote we had a website at the time and we were blogging saying if I didn’t see your film tonight I think I’d be dead. So it, I, it changed many people’s lives. And I think it’s also a good book for families of addicts, because that’s one of the hardest things to watch somebody you love, especially if it’s a child or sister, brother, whatever, to be taken away like that.
Dr. Mark Leeds [21:22] Yeah. Yeah, it’s definitely very difficult for families. And it does help, I think, you know, when someone, you know, that’s why sometimes the parents or the siblings or spouses of someone with an addiction, you know, they’ll go to support meetings and try to connect with other people going through the same thing to get a better understanding of it. And that’s something that you’re offering is a look into that a view into that world of what is it like, what are they going through and it’s not just a junkie on the street in a back alley or a cheap hotel room it’s a real person who had a real life and people have real stories if you go up to anybody who’s shooting up in an alley, that’s a person who had a job they had parents they grew up in a home I mean they and not everybody grew up in a broken home or on the on the streets I mean you know like for example Lisa in your story she had a had a very nice upbringing grew up in a nice home which is actually pretty you know more common than people think yeah I think you know that it’s you know people do can have pretty uneventful upbringings you know grew up in nice homes they have all their toys and good school and nice neighborhood and somehow they can and they can afford it yeah yeah one thing leads to another you know there’s there’s gateways now now now everybody is popular now to say cannabis or marijuana is completely safe it’s not a gateway drug in fact I was kind of shocked I always knew it was a gateway drug it’s obvious seems obvious I mean there’s anything they can get a person intoxicated in a social situation that makes them more open to the possibility of trying something they wouldn’t normally try would be a gateway. So alcohol, marijuana. But yeah, now when you look it up, everyone’s like, well, marijuana is not a gateway. Marijuana is like, it cures everything and it’s harmless and it’s never hurt a single person, which is not true. That’s just like the pro-cannabis. And I’m not completely against it. I think it does help people. It definitely has medicinal use, but it can also be a gateway to much worse things like crack and fentanyl and heroin.
Paul Perrier [23:39] Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. My thing is you can get addicted to anything. I live in Canada where pot is legal and I’m a pot smoker. I’m not an addict. I use it more for creativity as a tool. But, yeah, so could smoking marijuana lead to further things? Yes. But I think the real thing that addicts have to deal with is the trauma that they’re trying to cover up, right? That’s I think addiction from what I’ve studied I’m not a doctor but I certainly looked into it and I’ve been exposed to it because when this when the film started going out like it did when it got to you know going around the world I was being inundated by people reaching out to me going would you tell my story and then they tell me their story and I just go oh my god like But it just got worse and worse. And I couldn’t because I just didn’t have the capacity. There was so much going on in my life. But I definitely listened and responded to everybody and said, you know, good luck, if nothing else. But, yeah, it’s a tricky.
Dr. Mark Leeds [25:18] Addiction still has this stigma to it that it you know
Paul Perrier [25:22] It’s people who should just quit and just stop it and but it’s not that easy as a smoker will tell you like which I think is the worst addiction smoking cigarettes but that’s legal yeah and alcohol alcohol is legal and I drink alcohol, but I’m glad I don’t have that problem because that’s as bad as any addiction. And it’ll kill you one way or the other if it takes control.
Dr. Mark Leeds [25:51] Yeah, alcohol is a very dirty drug. And really, there’s no good amount of alcohol. Now they’ve come out with that where they say there’s no completely safe amount of alcohol. But, you know, people, there’s people that don’t have an alcohol addiction and they can, you know, have a half a glass of wine now and then, you know, a sip of champagne once a year. But yeah, it definitely, alcohol is definitely a problem for people. Yes, cigarettes, nicotine. Some people would say it’s the most addicting drug on the planet. There’s nothing more addicting than nicotine. You know, with things like methamphetamine and cocaine, like probably right after on the list of most addicting. But yeah, nicotine is at the top. But yeah, I think addiction is something that affects a lot of people, maybe even everybody. And you’re right, trauma is usually what leads to it. And trauma is underlying most addictions. And trauma is not always, you know, definitely in your work, you’ve come across people that have had obvious trauma. You know, they’ve been abused, beaten as children, have had broken, grown up in broken homes. But there’s also more subtle trauma. You know, someone can have what looks from the outside like a perfect upbringing and maybe their parents weren’t there for them. Maybe they were, you know, the way their siblings treated them was not that nice or the way their friends, maybe they were bullied, you know, so someone can appear from the outside to have like a great life, you know, their families have money and they live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood, great school, and they could still be suffering silently with trauma?
Paul Perrier [27:33] Well, I think we all have trauma in our childhood. And there’s something about that period in your life that you’re going to go through trauma. Life is trauma. Life is trauma. It’s highs and lows, and it’s somehow controlling those lows and controlling those highs because the highs are as dangerous as the lows, I think. Yeah yeah that’s true yeah what can I ask you what got you into becoming an addiction doctor
Dr. Mark Leeds [28:11] I just I mean […] people that I know and it was just a an interest to me and I actually I went to the they used to have a course yeah now now they’ve done away with it but there was an eight-hour course you had to do to get certified to prescribe Suboxone and similar medications to treat opioid addiction. And in 2006, I actually went to the course by accident. I thought it was a different course I was going to. And I drove to Miami, which is like, you know, probably a 45 minute drive from home and showed up at this Saturday course. It was like an all day thing. And I, there were some doctors there that I knew, you know, I was familiar with and I thought, well, I’m already here and it’s already paid for and I have nothing else to do today. I might as well just sit through and learn about whatever we’re going to talk about. And it was very intriguing, the fact that here was something that could treat opioid addiction and get people off the streets and off heroin and off with pain pills and into recovery. And it was still controversial. I think it still is to some degree, but people are more understanding about it that when someone takes a medication like Suboxone, they’re not acting or thinking addictively. In fact, that it takes those highs and lows that you get with street drugs and levels it off. The dopamine levels are more stable, and a person can feel very quickly as if they were never addicted in the first place and live a normal life, as long as they continue the medication. And then that tapering off the medication long term can be difficult for some people. But the medication itself is life-saving, and it allows a person to get their life back very quickly. Unfortunately, we don’t have that yet for crack or methamphetamine. Alcohol, there’s some promising things. There’s something called the Sinclair method where people can take an opioid blocker, naltrexone, and that can help them gradually taper off of alcohol instead of abruptly stopping it. So there’s, yeah, and the psychedelic treatments are very intriguing, although that’s still being worked out and studied. And, you know, there may be some great things coming up in the next few years as far as psychedelic treatment for all kinds of mental condition mental illnesses including addiction so yeah so I just find it like a very intriguing thing of just but yeah the magic of treating opiate addiction with buprenorphine which is the main ingredient of suboxone it’s almost miraculous it’s like people like over a period of their first month just kind of wake up and go from being that you don’t even recognize them in the first few visits that’s happened to me many times that I see someone come in I’m like oh who’s that and oh that’s who it is like I don’t even recognize them they’re not even the same person they were just weeks ago and this is this is a an approved drug oh yeah yeah approved since I think 2000 is when they came out with the law allowing it in 2002 the suboxone was released and or it was approved by the FDA and the drug itself was actually around much longer than that was used for pain management before. It’s a mild opioid combined. At the same time, it’s a blocker, receptor blocker, and partially activates the receptor. So technically, it’s classified as an opioid. But when people say it’s just trading one drug for another or trading an addiction for another addiction, that’s not true. It definitely is a different kind of a thing. A person goes, they go from obsessing over their drug to just stabilizing and starting to feel as if they feel just like they felt before they were addicted in the first place. And they’re able to just kind of go back to work, back to family life. Wow. Yeah, it’s not great for the, you know, the rehab business, you know, as far as people going in and out of rehab over and over again. I guess people are able to stay out of rehab when they stick to that treatment.
Paul Perrier [31:56] But it is a business.
Dr. Mark Leeds [32:00] Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, there’s some conflict of interest there, you know, when they do benefit when people relapse and come back again. And, you know, so ideally, I think I think we’re on the verge of some groundbreaking treatments coming out that will help people with crack and cocaine and methamphetamine addictions better.
Paul Perrier [32:27] Good. So anyway, so it’s interesting. It’s interesting how you got into it by going somewhere you weren’t expecting to. Like that’s what when writing my book and it took me 10 years to write this book. But just going back over your life and find these little things, what seems like coincidences or something, actually change your life and begin to make your sense of your life. Like it took me like since I’ve written this book, it’s been a very good for my mental health. I did a lot of introspection. I think writing is a great tool for people who are struggling with anything. It’s another art form. But like my book, and I only release my book as a hard copy. You can’t get a digital version because part of what I want to do is get people off their phones for a while. Not that phones are all bad. They’re great. They’re unbelievable tools. But what’s going on now? I mean, from when I grew up without any of this, right? I became a teen in the 70s where there was no phone no iPhones or computers and to me that was freedom and I have kids I have two daughters who are in their 20s now and you know I look at their lives and go man you missed something with all I know I sound like an old man but there was something about being unconnected and kids and everybody should get unconnected for a while.
Dr. Mark Leeds [34:16] That never-ending social media scrolling that they do is, I mean, unfortunately, it’s not all that different from crack use. It’s safer, definitely a lot safer physically, but it’s the same exact thing. You just keep going back over and over and over again, saying, I’ll stop after one more, I’ll stop after one more. And you just find yourself hours and maybe even days later, just crashing, passing out, realizing you’ve done nothing, but kept going.
Paul Perrier [34:42] It’s the worst addiction. I think it’s worse than any drug addiction. I’m not exaggerating. I’m a looker. Like when I go out on the streets, I usually have my camera, but I’m looking at people all the time. And their heads are never up. Yeah. Like people are always on their phones, everybody. And it’s like, well, not everybody, but the majority. And communication, which is so easy now, I find it’s getting harder and harder to communicate with people because they don’t know how to communicate.
Dr. Mark Leeds [35:23] Yeah. Yeah, you’ve probably been in this situation where one of your kids is right in front of you and the best way to get through to them is send them a text message.
Paul Perrier [35:31] Right. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes that doesn’t work.
Dr. Mark Leeds [35:34] Yeah. Yeah, you got to find all kinds of new ways to get through to them.
Paul Perrier [35:39] Yeah. I mean, hopefully talking to them face to face is the best way to do it. Right.
Dr. Mark Leeds [35:45] Yeah. Yeah. Ideally, that would be definitely the best way. Yeah. So, yeah, Paul Perrier, thank you. Thank you for joining me on that podcast. And where can someone get your book if they want to read it today?
Paul Perrier [35:58] So it’s available on Amazon. Just put cracked wide open. It’ll come up. Yeah, it’s an independent book. If anybody’s struggling with addiction. But I also think, like you said before, if you’re if you’re an artist, I mean it to be an inspiring story for artists, although it tells a very rough road. That’s what you’ll go through. And hopefully you’ll find sort of some sort of purpose with your work. And I’ve found a purpose with my work. And I plan to keep hopefully helping people and inspiring people. Thank you.
