New York Dispatch. 2.

There's a memorable line in Methadonia, the documentary about drug addiction playing at the New York Film Festival. One character says, "You're only as sick as your secret."

That might as well be the subtitle of Michel Negroponte's film about methadone addicts in New York. (Mercifully, the doc airs on HBO October 6, so the quote whores won't tag it with anything stupid in a newspaper ad.) The addicts and the director share the belief that the long road to recovery is worth the work - and it's a lot of work - even though only a tiny fraction makes it. If you listen to the addicts in their 40s, 50s and 60s talk about decades of addiction, you'll suspect the drugs sure aren't worth what they put you through.

Methadonia is the name for that world constructed out of addiction and recovery, two life sentences that addicts can't escape. As we all know, the methadone replaces heroin, suppressing the urge but denying the addict the real high - it's the grey zone. As addicts on methadone become resistant to their dosages, they increase the intensity or mix the methadone with benzodiazepines like Xanax and Valium to create a different kind of high. For a lot of them, it's worse than heroin and even harder to kick. What a cocktail.

The film is constructed around two years spent with a group of addicts from one methadone center in Manhattan. You don't see or hear from the doctor who runs it. What we see are addicts managing themselves. All of them got hooked years ago and may have HIV or hepatitis C. You begin to wonder about the term "recreational drugs." Given the death rate and the low rate of really cleaning up, these are genuine survivors. At first, it's impressive how freely they speak about getting into drugs and the awful things they've had to do to stay high. But speaking is second nature to addicts, who spend a lot of time convincing people to give them things and even more time convincing themselves that this will be the last fix or the last drink. Many have been in prison, where there's not much to do but talk. Recovery, meant in part to be a kind of talking cure, can often seem like an addiction to talk. If you've known addicts, you'll know what I mean. It's something like getting religion, just more desperately dependent in a lot of cases on the adrenaline that rises and falls.

Since this is HBO, you might ask, "Is this cinema?" The real question ought to be, "Is this addiction?" Sadly, it is. Michel Negroponte says he made Methadonia in part because his wife's sister was a heroin addict. You feel as if you get to know the addicts here, too. Negroponte's camera comes right up against them, whether they're nodding out or trying to get you to believe they're going straight. It gets close, but it doesn't massage them.

Or does it, just out of the hope that these long-term addicts might live real lives some day? It seemed as if a dozen of the addicts in Methadonia were at the press conference for the film at Lincoln Center, which turned into its own little support group with members crediting Negroponte with keeping them off drugs and cheering each other on for cheering him. That's show business.

Don't expect a definitive, fair and balanced look at addiction here. You'll probably get that from PBS some day. The film is told from these addicts' perspective, with a voice-over from Negroponte providing context and a reality check on the addicts' own description of their sickness. The voice is nothing if not sober. We don't see shooting galleries. We don't see addicts sleeping in the street, although Steve, a friendly former security guard, takes us to the ledge in Soho where he says he lived for years. This is about treatment.

Forget the lyricism, the hymns to decadence, and all the other nonsense. These aren't the models or rockers who shoot up. Kate Moss does not come in for her cameo, and they're not the kids who drive the Lexus in from Rye to score in Washington Heights and then drive back. (If you want to see a glimpse of the younger generation of addicts, take a look at this week's New York magazine. It's still not glamorous.) These are the people who black out and burn their houses down. As Negroponte's camera closes in, our older cast looks ravaged by years of addiction and a bit numbed. It's obviously the methadone, but other addicts can seem that way, too. What's missing, at least on the screen, is the anger that you see in so many alcoholics. Did Negroponte leave that out, or does the methadone maintain your disposition as it settles your urges, sort of like what the anti-depressants are supposed to do?

Watching Methadonia, you get the sense that these are the lucky ones. They're still alive; they can talk. One couple even has a child, albeit one who's born prematurely and addicted to drugs. The threat of the methadone mix with benzos is grim, but the numbing effect seems oddly soft, nothing like the slash and burn experience of methamphetamine, which is now burning its way into white America with a fury that reminds you of the way crack first made its mark in the 1980s. (I'm surprised that more films haven't addressed Red State Heroin.)

Addiction has many, many faces, many cures, and even more tragedies. Negroponte has shown us some of them over two years, which is a short time in what he calls a lifetime job with no days off. It's not a clinical film, but a non-fiction ensemble drama of characters. We'll be seeing lots more as HBO continues its project to document addiction. We'll also see how much the audience can take, or wants to take.

I'm not going to say that substance abuse is a theme in this year's New York Film Festival, but there's another face to addiction on the screen there, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, a Rumanian film about a man, drunk and sick, who journeys through the night in an ambulance that takes him from hospital to hospital. In a story, believe it or not, with lots of humor, the title steals the punch-line. More about that soon.

Posted by dwhudson at September 24, 2005 9:02 AM