Is rehab and “tough love” the best way to help them through addiction? (with Joanna Rudnick)
About the episode
What does it really mean to love someone through addiction — and how do we move beyond the idea that rehab is the only path to healing? In this episode, fellow sibling and filmmaker Joanna Rudnick and I explore the complicated love between siblings — the guilt, hope, and heartbreak that come with trying to help someone you love. Through The Opioid Trilogy, Joanna brings these emotions to life with unflinching honesty, capturing stories of recovery, resilience, and the power of connection.
Guest: Joanna Rudnick; filmmaker and founder of Storied Studios
Joanna Rudnick is an Emmy®-nominated documentary filmmaker and storyteller whose work explores identity, health, and the human experience. Her films have premiered at Sundance, aired on PBS, and influenced national conversations. She has produced and directed The Opioid Trilogy, a series of short animated films that explore opioid addiction and recovery: Brother, which spotlights her brother Matt’s story and their sibling relationship, Do No Harm which uncovers the hidden truths of the rehab industry and stigma of medically assisted treatment, and Coming Home, which provides a raw look into a mother-daughter relationship and sobriety after incarceration.
This episode will help you:
Navigate the complicated love of siblings — the guilt, the hope, the heartbreak
Understand the paths to recovery beyond rehab
Get introduced to the failures of the rehab industry
Learn how to help and support a loved one in early recovery, or sober curious
See what it means to love someone through addiction, even when you don’t have the answers
Episode links
ABOUT ALICIA MENESES MAPLES
https://storiedproduction.com/joanna-rudnick/
WATCH THE OPIOID TRILOGY
Ep 1: “Brother”
Ep 2: “Do No Harm”
Ep 3: “Coming Home”
Resources
💬 JOIN OUR SIBLING-FOCUSED COMMUNITY
Join our Facebook group, Siblings For Love of Recovery to:
Connect with other siblings
Share your own story in a safe space
Support for navigating the journey
🤳 CONNECT WITH FOR LOVE OF RECOVERY
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forloveofrecovery
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561542956095
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Joanna: [00:00:00] TV shows or reality shows about addiction. I sort of marvel at the fact that oftentimes people are interviewed in active addiction at their absolute worst. How are we ever gonna change the way we think about people living in addiction? There's more people in recovery than in active addiction in this world.
Joanna: Yet we rarely tell stories of recovery because it's not a Hollywood story. I think stigma kills, and that's why I wanted to make these films.
Dominique: Welcome to FLOR for Love of Recovery, where I'm your host, Dominique Sibling relationships can be so unique, but they can become more complex when there's drug or alcohol use involved. If you find yourself questioning how to help, you're not alone. Every month we bring together stories that empower you to navigate your sibling's [00:01:00] addiction and offer a sense of connection.
Dominique: We also provide fresh perspectives on understanding substance use and how to protect your peace. Join me on this journey in restoring hope and healing.
Dominique: Today I'm joined by Joanna Rudnick, founder and chief creative officer of Storied Studios. You've probably come across some of her work. Her films have been seen on P-B-S-B-B-C-H-B-O and so much more. But what feels most powerful about having her here is that she's also a sister who has walked alongside a brother struggling with substance use.
Dominique: Joanna has turned that lived experience into art, creating deeply personal animated films that give voice to people facing addiction, including her own brother Matt. So Joanna, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm incredibly grateful and excited to hear your story today.
Joanna: Thank you so much for having me and for having a place for siblings.
Dominique: Of course. Before we get into talking about some of the films that you've created, I'd love to know a little bit more [00:02:00] about your relationship with Matt.
Joanna: Sure. So Matt is three years older than me and he sat between two sisters. So he was a real sister brother, and he was larger than life, like really, truly a large figure in his body.
Joanna: He was. Uh, around six four and, and, uh, a big guy, like a football player, but more, uh, like a teddy bear in personality. And he was funny. He made me laugh. We laughed so hard. That's what we did together. We just laughed. He had this encyclopedic knowledge of the universe and cosmos and other space, and was fascinated from a young age.
Joanna: That always is one of the ways in which I kind of identify
Dominique: Matt. I love that. Yeah. Likewise with my brother. We have a very humorous dynamic, so I can totally understand where you're coming from. For those that haven't watched the film, brother, could you tell us a little bit about what the film [00:03:00] is and what that inspiration was like?
Joanna: Sure. I think it was right around 2015, we learned that Matt had been struggling with heroin addiction and it really came out of the blue. I had absolutely no idea. My mother had an idea that Matt was struggling at first with Oxycodone and other opioids, but I had just absolutely no idea. Mm-hmm. And. At first, the way that I had reacted was a lot of what I learned from society and, you know, tough love and coerced rehab.
Joanna: Like of course, the only answer is to go to rehab. Okay. You're struggling with heroin addiction. You have been for a long time. I'm surprised by this. I love you. But I think if you can go to rehab, as what I've learned is if you can go for 30 days, you're gonna come out and, and hopefully you'll just be able to live the rest of your life and you'll no longer be addicted to this, to this substance.
Joanna: You know, I don't think I had an understanding of. [00:04:00] Addiction as a chronic illness and why To that, to understand what was Matt was going through, I had needed to understand why Matt enjoyed and liked heroin and what it did for him. I needed to listen rather than assume so that led many years later. To us being able to have a real conversation, and this was after a lot of times going to rehab, trying to kick heroin in many different ways that I sort of started to realize that there's a lot more for me to understand and assuming wasn't getting us anywhere.
Joanna: And anything I learned wasn't getting us anywhere, and that I actually bought into a lot of stuff that wasn't scientifically proven, sort of like the addiction industrial complex or rehab industrial complex, but wasn't real. And I really needed to understand Matt. So that led to us sitting down and having a conversation.
Joanna: As a filmmaker, I didn't film it. I just recorded it on [00:05:00] audio and I realized at the time that we could have a much more open conversation without the camera in the room. I also recorded a few of our phone conversations, and it was really just to listen. Nonjudgmentally without any stigma. That led me to wanting to make the film with Matt.
Joanna: He was alive. We talked about making the film together. We talked about using animation to reduce stigma, but that listening session is what kind of opened the floodgates to me to realize so much of what I had learned was wrong, and I knew I wasn't unique as a sibling or family member
Dominique: in that situation.
Dominique: I love that. It sounds like the experience was so much more than just a conversation, but it was really about you getting to understand Matt's point of view, what was going on inside his head and probe around a little bit.
Joanna: It was incredibly raw and candid. Mm-hmm. He did not hold back. That conversation and the film's only 15 minutes, so not everything made [00:06:00] it into the film.
Joanna: And I was sensitive to the fact that, you know, his children were gonna hear this, my mother was gonna hear this, but I think he needed to be able to say a lot of things that he had been holding in for so long that were causing credible harm. Yeah, just unbelievable harm to him and shame and pain. And by not listening.
Joanna: We were contributing to that in a lot of ways because I think the biggest fear is if they knew, would they still love me? And that's so much of what we reinforce with these addiction narratives. Let's just say all these horrible things and then judge the person, or let's watch someone at their absolute worst.
Joanna: When I watch films about addiction or TV shows or reality shows about addiction. I, I sort of marvel at the fact that oftentimes people are interviewed in active addiction at their absolute worst. How are we ever gonna change the way we think about people living in [00:07:00] addiction?
Dominique: 100%. I absolutely love that you're talking about that because.
Dominique: I follow so many channels and accounts and people where I feel like the initial reaction that folks are looking for is like that trauma response. They want to see the chaos, kind of like clickbait, and I think there's so much that doesn't get. Told, especially when that person is in recovery or when that person is sober, I think there's a totally different perspective and light to shine on them rather than just the chaos of them being an active addiction.
Dominique: So I absolutely love that you took that stance with Matt in communicating the story when you were making the film. Like how exactly did the process change the way you saw him or potentially changed your relationship with him?
Joanna: This is where I might start to cry. Um, and it's hard for me to cry honestly.
Joanna: I think I fell even more in love with Matt making this film. And I [00:08:00] really also realized that you can know someone so well. They can be your sibling, right? You can grow up with them in the same household, and you don't always know their pain, and you don't always know their level of pain. Making the film allowed me to understand how much pain Matt was in, how detrimental that was to him, living life and being in a real place to feel stable and supported enough to achieve recovery.
Joanna: I'm a cancer survivor, and I think the same way, actually, I don't usually use that word and I'm just about to talk about why I don't like that word. Mm-hmm. But I had breast cancer is another way to say it. And I always think about the people who we've lost to addiction. I don't like to call them the ones that haven't survived or haven't reached recovery, because I think within every single one of them, that possibility is there.
Joanna: It's [00:09:00] really hard. It's really, really hard. And Matt had said to me when I was talking to him, I'm in late stage addiction. It's a term I'd never heard in my life. It was definitely something I didn't wanna believe or hear. And I think the stigma and the systems and just how difficult it is to forgive yourself in life really contributed to his death.
Joanna: There's more people in recovery than an active addiction in this world, yet we rarely tell stories of recovery because it's not a Hollywood story. I think stigma kills, and that's why I wanted to make these films. Absolutely. It's not as interesting as seeing someone at their absolute worst and then maybe putting one line at the end, like, this person is in recovery.
Joanna: Recovery is a long and messy story, you know, and I think it's a harder story to tell in a lot of ways, but I wanted the series to really [00:10:00] be about that in a non non-judgmental way. So one of the questions I had as a sibling is. Understanding how just brutally terrible addiction truly is, that you are so reliant on this substance that you have to get up and you're gonna be sick if you don't have it.
Joanna: You have to do, have the same thing over again. How am I gonna get it? How am I gonna afford this? What do I have to say? Who do I have to say these things to? And Matt would often talk like I have to. Tell a lot of lies to live the life I have to live. He said it all of these things, to do this all over again the next day.
Joanna: I think for me, that was one of the biggest questions is if that is so horrible, then why? If you are not living in that. You think of it as why can't that person stop doing [00:11:00] that? Why are they putting themselves in this situation? Why are they doing something that can be lethal? Why are they doing this to their family?
Joanna: And I think that's a really common thing, rather than what kind of pain must they be in every single day of their lives to live this life. That is a real frame shift. That happened to me in making that felt.
Dominique: I love that you're bringing that up because I think as a family member or a loved one, there's a profound sense of empathy and compassion that you have to tap into in order to even understand where that person is coming from.
Dominique: Because I think as the outside looking in, especially as a sibling, you might be thinking, well, I had the same parents as you. I dealt with similar circumstances or even more challenging circumstances, but I didn't approach it this way. I didn't cope by using substances. And I think to your point when you're talking about Matt, [00:12:00] is you need to understand what is occurring for them.
Dominique: And my brother, I've recently just had this conversation with him and he said. He's not using the drugs just to get high. That's of course part of it, but it's using just to feel normal. Just to feel a baseline level of okay and not feel that pain the same way we might take over the counter medication to just deal with physical pain.
Dominique: There's a lot of these drugs and substances, including alcohol. Mask that emotional pain and trauma that they might be dealing with, even if they don't realize that's what they're using it for. You had asked, why can't they do X? Why can't they do Y? And I think we need to move away from that narrative of tough love to really understand.
Dominique: They don't need to just hit this rock bottom. They really need to. Make the changes in a process and in a way that they're comfortable making, not in a process or a way that's [00:13:00] being dictated by some other person or external figure.
Joanna: Yeah. I mean, who's also to say what someone else's rock bottom is. I mean, it's so paternalistic, the terms that we use around addiction.
Joanna: You're an addict, you're clean or you're dirty. Substance abuse, where else do you say that? Rather than substance use? I have a particularly. Hard memory. That's hard even to admit where we performed a intervention, the one time we ever did anything like that, there was a surprise element and sneaking up on Matt and trying to say, you have to go to to rehab, and him saying, it doesn't work for me.
Joanna: It's not gonna work. I think back on that a lot as something that I would never do again. I would never advise. I don't feel that that is the way to try to get somebody to find recovery. I do [00:14:00] think, honestly, it has to come from the person themselves. I think forcing someone no matter what, into any kind of a situation like that is counterproductive.
Joanna: And again, I think it's just not listening and allowing a system that is a for-profit system. And advertises and has lots of power kind of dictate how you approach a really, really sick person who is struggling in a lot of pain rather than listening further, stigmatizing them further, making them feel like they have absolutely no agency.
Joanna: You know, again, these are things that I feel like I had to learn from loving him and to get to a place where. We were all able to tell him how much we loved him and supported him no matter what. And I think that's really key. No matter what. Like if you use, again, you're loved. [00:15:00] If you drop out of rehab, you're loved.
Joanna: If you decide you don't wanna go to rehab, you're loved. You know, that's hard because you're worried. You are scared every day that you're gonna get a call.
Dominique: Absolutely. I
Joanna: spent a lot of time scared. To get a call that that person is no longer there.
Dominique: I think you were touching on so many great points. Going back to the intervention point that you made, when we're cornering our loved ones and forcing them to make a change, it's out of our own fear and desperation.
Dominique: Absolutely. Worry about what will happen if they don't go to rehab or if they don't. Follow through with whatever agenda you're putting forward in front of them. And I think that's a tough spot to have to be in because there's a sense of helplessness. Taking a step back and learning about all the different resources and tools that are available to you, I think will help you or your family make more informed decisions rather than just [00:16:00] pushing a, an agenda that is actually full of stigma and shame.
Dominique: I've. Spoken to my parents and truly believe that this was the best way to do something. And I've had a very candid conversation with my father, who also struggles with alcohol use. And we were having a conversation about interventions, and he's like, there's nothing solution oriented about putting someone in a corner surprising them and telling them all the reasons why they're doing something wrong.
Dominique: And at the end of the day, if they do decide to make a change following that intervention. If they're not doing it for themselves, they're doing it for you because they don't wanna Exactly. You families really need to understand that if and when a loved one is gonna make a change around their substance use, it has to be for them.
Dominique: They can be motivated by the people they care about, but I think deep down it really has to come down. To their own desire in wanting to do it,
Joanna: you know, sharing that intervention story. I have to say, I'm, I'm haunted by [00:17:00] it. I'm haunted by an image of my brother driving away with a broken car window in a rainstorm with the black plastic bag on it.
Joanna: Wow. And realizing what we were doing was driving him further away. So much of loving someone in addiction also is, they're moving farther away from you always. There's this person you remember, and sometimes you can get close to that person. Mm-hmm. But the illness really takes them away and you can even be in the same room and feel really far away.
Joanna: And the addiction, because of the secrecy and everything else that goes with it, and the stigma and also creates so many barriers happening at the same time where you can't touch that person. I used to say that to him like, I see you. I can't get to you. Like I don't know how to permeate. I don't know how to embrace you.
Joanna: I just feel you farther away. So a lot of what tough [00:18:00] love and intervention and this popular lore that has been pedaled over time does. Mm-hmm. Is it takes someone who's already really far away and it just pushes them so much further.
Dominique: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And dangerously further. What I have learned from not only making brother but making the two other films in the opioid trilogy and talking to a number of people is that having someone believe in you and love you unconditionally is one of the greatest supports and indicators of actually achieving absolutely that.
Joanna: That actually really does help. And Tough love doesn't.
Dominique: I love that you said that. It actually gave me goosebumps when you said like unconditional love, because that's exactly what it is. I think a lot of the times we can weaponize our love and I think I've done that in the past, right? It's like, if you don't do X, then I will do Y or I will, you know, not talk to you or, and I think.
Dominique: The [00:19:00] times that I've done that where I've actually distanced myself from my brother, or I've weaponized my love for him, our relationship, we became more estranged. But I also felt that his addiction got worse. And when I started to show up unconditionally and support him, no matter what, I feel like our relationship actually got better and we got closer.
Dominique: And I wanna caveat that with showing up and supporting your sibling or your loved one doesn't mean having no boundaries. 'cause I know that's something that comes up a lot. You still prioritize your own mental wellbeing and physical wellbeing and your safe space, but it's still finding those pockets of ways that you can show up for your sibling despite where they are in their addiction or their recovery.
Dominique: So I think it's very interesting to talk about the sibling bond and this concept of unconditional love.
Joanna: I think that moment of making the film was a moment of unconditional love. Of, I'm gonna sit here and listen. There's nothing you can say that will make me walk away. Leave the room, not [00:20:00] love you. In fact, I wanna understand you, right?
Joanna: I can see his smile. I can feel, I think also just the dignity of listening. You know, the medical institution doesn't listen to people who use drugs. Siblings, family members, we all assume we know better. Absolutely. We, we have the answers somehow. Even though we have no lived experience whatsoever, I have no idea even what it feels like to use heroin, you know?
Joanna: Right. So, I mean, these are not experiences I understand, but yet I'm an expert in it. You know, nothing about that makes sense to me. And I think there's a lot of rhetoric that's really painful. Stigma. Yeah. You know, telling someone you can't love them because they're sick. Not gonna get anyone better.
Joanna: Absolutely.
Dominique: Yeah. That's so important, and I love how you talk about how this story around brother and also your experience with Matt, how personal of a journey it was. I'd love to know a little bit more about like what did that mean for you as [00:21:00] a filmmaker creating brother? Like not just the emotional side, but really like what was the creative and strategic thinking behind.
Dominique: Producing it and wanting to make sure that you were capturing your relationship and Matt's point of view and the best light possible.
Joanna: Yeah, that's a really good question. In documentary, we always have the source material and the source material. Here really was this conversation, so I knew I could be true to Matt by sticking with that conversation.
Joanna: I wanted to show that I was really trying to understand what this addiction life. Where the pain came from, what the reality of living with opioid addiction was, what he had been through. And the way to do that was to imagine what he was telling me so that the audience could actually understand as I'm, you know, we're talking about unconditional love and empathy.
Joanna: As I'm sitting and listening and imagining what this is, I felt like the audience needed to do that. Again, in a way that wasn't centered on the voyeurism of [00:22:00] like taking drugs and sitting in that, but also the experience of what, what it meant for Matt to do heroin and why, and what it meant to live with the shame of it all and how he was struggling.
Joanna: Psychologically and inside for the audience too, I think takes a layer of judgment away. You're watching animation. It's rotoscope, so it's drawn even though it, there's still a lot of emotion and we are taking some liberties with how we're showing you what the world looks like and is like. In the inner life of Matt using animation, we decided to use animation very specifically.
Joanna: So that you could think, this could be my brother, my father, my loved one, and maybe think of that person slightly differently and watch with more compassion. The challenge, Matt had seen some really early storyboard tests and I, I always thought I would probably hire an actor to play Matt. Just creating that, that distance and blurring that [00:23:00] reality a little bit while we were.
Joanna: Making the film, we lost Matt in 2020 and that was the height of the pandemic and Matt overdosed from fentanyl almost exactly five years ago. And I think that continuing the film felt very urgent to Matt's memory and to helping other people and also painful. To listen and I do think I had to create a distance.
Joanna: 'cause every time his voice would come on still, every time his voice comes on and I play the film, I'm sharing a link and it starts playing and I hear his voice. It's deeply painful.
Dominique: I can only imagine. I think, you know, you sharing your story, Matt, sharing his story and you guys sharing that sibling perspective together.
Dominique: Not only is it touching, but I think you bring such warmth to a topic that [00:24:00] is so frightening and his memory still lives on in a positive way. So I love that you're still doing this work and carrying on these types of conversations. First September is National Recovery Month. You created these two new films coming Home and Do No Harm.
Dominique: What was it like for you to move away from telling your family's own story to highlighting the stories of others?
Joanna: Yeah, it was a very different experience than the first film, which was so personal. There was a real urgency to honor Matt and bring Matt to the world, and there's a lot of pain to Matt not seeing how receptive audiences are to him and relate to his story and how much it has helped other people and also just have.
Joanna: Darn lovable. He is. I'm like all that hating yourself. Like people really appreciate how honest you were, how raw you were. Like what a gift. I think what I also realized is there's a million different versions of addiction to recovery. We often tell you [00:25:00] very Disney picture of them, and it's such a diverse experience, like everything in terms of health and illness and the complex people that we are.
Joanna: So I wanted to make two additional films. To spotlight different experiences of addiction and recovery and felt there was a lot more to say. Mm-hmm. And I also felt there was a lot more to say, and you touch upon this on the larger society in which all of this is happening. I really felt strongly, and I learned this from Matt again, Matt is my teacher an educator, full stop.
Joanna: Right. And I learned this from Matt that we often in storytelling. And the media focus on the supply side of addiction. And at the time there had been many very incredible films about the Sackler family and about Purdue Pharma and about the supply world that had kind of gotten us to where we [00:26:00] were. And Matt's thinking always was, you have to look at the demand side.
Joanna: We're not gonna get out of. Opioid, the crisis we're in, you're gonna like clamp down. This is exactly what happened. By the way, you're gonna clamp down on the pharmaceutical side of this and you're gonna get this tainted drug supply. And you're gonna get all these, you know, variations of fentanyl and analogs of fentanyl that are gonna be more and more dangerous, which is exactly where we are.
Joanna: Right? And you're, you're not gonna stop the, you know, supply of. Fentanyl or heroin because the demand is there. So I think that spoke to me and made me wanna make these two other films that are, again, listening to other people and their lived experience without a ton of judgment and how people recover, which is amazing to me that we are sitting here in 2025 and Raina McMahon, who is the, the woman [00:27:00] that we follow in episode two, do No Harm, said that she cannot go to an NA meeting.
Joanna: Talk about being on buprenorphine because that is not allowed and she could not get a sponsor for many years because of using medication assisted treatment because that is not allowed in certain 12 step communities. This is 2025, so I really wanted to also talk more about the demand side and the societal side, and was able to do so in the other two episodes in addition to sharing stories of recovery.
Joanna: That are diverse and different and coming from different childhood experiences and different backgrounds and everything. That was really important to me and why I continued the series.
Dominique: Yeah, I love that you talk about it in Rena's story and not being able to get a sponsor through her NA meetings and her using buprenorphine.
Dominique: I had a very similar experience with my brother, where luckily for the last five or six months he's been. Sober through [00:28:00] using methadone and for a long time, I feel like that has been so stigmatized and is still stigmatized and a lot of terminology, especially in the na cing around, you know, you're not really clean or you're not really sober, and it's like, what does that actually mean?
Dominique: Because what I've noticed is the people in my life that have been on medically assisted treatment, AKA mat. Have had so much more stability in their lives and they've been able to regain some controls that way they can begin to live and think a normal life. And I think when we start to shame access to medication and the types of medication, or how much medication someone's using, we're taking away their ability and their autonomy to regulate.
Dominique: Their own bodies and what they need. So I love that this is a topic that comes up in the new films that you've created.
Joanna: I'm certainly not saying that medically assisted treatment is a panacea, either, that that's gonna solve everything. One of the issues is that it does have a. High [00:29:00] drop off rate. Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And my brother was using buprenorphine and then stopped, and that is when he ended up having a fatal overdose. This is all in combination. It's, it's a chronic illness and, you know, I think intense about patient treatment was really important to him. And you know, I think there's real issues in methadone that we talk about in the second episode, the fact that you can't get methadone prescribed by a doctor.
Joanna: You know, Rayna talks about you have to show up at the clinic if you don't get there by a certain time. If you use and you get a positive urine, you can't get access to the medicine. Absolutely. Either. Anything. Well, what does that mean? If we're trying to keep people alive, if we're really talking about harm reduction, if you're not gonna be someone's doctor, you're not gonna give them medication.
Joanna: They need to stay alive. Okay. You're not practicing harm reduction. So, you know, these are the types of things that I, I think about deeply as the system is still pretty flawed. We sort of wanted to show in [00:30:00] episode two also, it's just the predatory nature of the rehab industry. And there's been, you know, documentaries and reports about the Florida shuffles where you're being sold, that this is gonna be the answer.
Joanna: And I don't know what chronic disease you can, you can quote unquote cure in 30 days. And rehab works for the people it works for. All of these things work for the people. It works for 12 Step works for the people, it works for, medication works for the people, it works for, but everyone should have the ability to have their own paths to recovery, whatever it takes without an additional stigma.
Dominique: Absolutely. I think that's so well said. And it goes back to the same point we were saying earlier where it comes down to families understanding that there is like no one size fits all approach to. Finding or maintaining recovery. I think learning about all these different methods and paths I think can help you understand your loved one, but also help siblings or families be champions of change and actually [00:31:00] encouraging a path that works for them instead of pushing a direction that might actually not work.
Dominique: So yeah, I love that. That's brought up,
Joanna: and Matt says that in episode one, he was reciting the story of detoxing, um, in a hospital setting and just saying like, I just need to like. Get off 'cause I'm trying to get this new job, you know, and, and the, the physician he was talking to there was saying, you know, this is not an acute issue.
Joanna: This is a chronic issue. And I think that's a really important thing to understand. We all want the story. Where you can fix something right away. That is the American dream, is that, you know, in a lot of ways, like something is not going well in your life and there is a quick fix and our whole culture is Yep.
Joanna: You know, is based on that. And I think, you know, the, the idea that when you've been living in addiction for so long that you're gonna [00:32:00] solve that right away. There's never gonna be any faltering or relapse or struggle Going back to the origins of inpatient rehab and looking at who, who it was aimed for, and really it was supposed to be an entree to, to, to aa, to, to real long sustained ongoing therapy and support.
Joanna: You know, and it was aimed at, you know, middle class white men who were alcoholics at a totally different time in in the world. Pretty contradictory.
Dominique: Absolutely. It's so challenging when you think about all the systemic roadblocks that there are, and you talk about that in both stories coming home and do no harm.
Dominique: How did you think about conveying those challenges and bringing that to life on screen?
Joanna: Yeah, that's a great question. And I knew going into it that Rayna had had this relationship with Dr. Sarah Wakeman. And Sarah Wakeman was actually someone that when I was going through [00:33:00] Matt's addiction, I started to follow Sarah and really listened to her and was thinking, wow, this is a physician who is.
Joanna: Talking about addiction in a way that I've just not heard before. Who wants to bring addiction into healthcare? Who says things like, I asked the people who I treat why they, what they like about opioids, what they like about heroin. And I was thinking, I've never heard a doctor quite say that before. You know, these are pretty radical things, you know, saying to Rayna, if you use, I'm still your doctor, you know, uh, I'm not going anywhere.
Joanna: Right. You know, so I think that. Again, the power of compassion. Do no harm,
Dominique: absolutely. From
Joanna: the medical field and evidence-based treatment from the medical field in addiction, rather than treating it way outside in this like no man's land. That was really radical to me and, and something I really wanted to do.
Joanna: I think there's also something. Serendipitous in something that happened [00:34:00] with Raina is Raina had spoken in our interview about this sort of famous Rat Park experiment. And it's also something my brother talked about quite a bit, and this was something that happened in the seventies. I'm hoping I'm getting all of this right, by a Canadian researcher who took laboratory rats and, and didn't experiment where he isolated the rats with opioid and then, you know, saw what their usage was like and then created this really phenomenal.
Joanna: Playground called Rat Park where they had things to play with and other rats to hang out with, and also the same availability of the substance and showed that they used a lot less, which was pretty radical at the time to think about, wait a minute, community and connection. Are actually part of recovery.
Dominique: [00:35:00] Absolutely. And so
Joanna: love loving someone rather than further isolating them, right? Going back to where we started, this conversation would be the opposite. If you really wanted to help someone achieve recovery and health. So Reyna talked about that and I just felt that was such a part of her story.
Joanna: Becausecause, you could see her getting, again, further isolated, shut out by the medical community, right of life, really. You know, people walking by her on the street and just say, giving up on her. Saying that's just an addict and she's never gonna be anything. And then seeing her at the end of the film as a recovery coach and a mom of two kids and you know that, that inspires me.
Joanna: That might not be the Hollywood story of we wanna see someone down and out, but that really inspires me, especially when you love someone and you feel hopeless. 'cause at times you really feel hopeless and it can feel really personal. Relapse can feel really personal. Even though it's not about you, but we know that Right.
Joanna: And And devastating and scary. [00:36:00] Really scary. So I think seeing Reyna with her two kids and realizing that is powerful. And this physician showing her that unconditional love. Right. And also good medical care. Wow. Like that effect really matters. There is another way we can learn. We are sticking to a lot of stuff in 2025.
Joanna: Still. There are forces that are keeping us here and there are still physicians who look at someone and say, why are you doing this to yourself? You are wasting taxpayer dollars. You are never gonna get better, and that is not helpful. You know, in 2025,
Dominique: I absolutely love the illustrative idea of like Rat Park.
Dominique: I came across a TED Talk by Johann Hari called Everything you know about addiction is wrong. Where he gets into the weeds about. The Rat Park concept, and I think it was, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure [00:37:00] at the end of the study, a hundred percent of the rats who had access to that rat park with the playground and the activities and the other rats chose regular water.
Dominique: Whereas the rats that had access to water that was infused with heroin died. So it was a very stark contrast, and I think for me. Watching that clip and learning that information, that was the catalyst in me wanting to actually improve my relationship with my brother and get closer to him rather than take that step back like I was being told to do.
Dominique: Someone had made a comment to me when I was going to an ARANON meeting and they said. Dominique, you haven't done everything that you could do, and they were implying that the one thing that I had not done was cut my brother off. And after that conversation, I really had to take a step back and think about what benefit would I get from actually cutting my brother off again.
Dominique: I think it's teaching that narrative around like tough love and that the person needs [00:38:00] to actually hit their rock bottom. Up until that point, I had just seen our relationship and his health getting so much worse. So when I heard this Ted talk and I heard about this Rat Park concept, I did a complete 180 and made more of a conscious effort to talk to my brother, ask him those questions, get to understand.
Dominique: Where he was coming from and what purpose substances were actually providing him. So I love that. This is a topic that is brought up in the film and through Rena.
Joanna: Yeah. And the scientist is Bruce Alexander. I just wanna say that to give him props for that. Who did the original experiment? My brother also shared that Ted talk with me, the Yohan Hari TED Talk, and it's everything you think you know about addiction is wrong.
Joanna: Right. Um, is is the title of it, which is really phenomenal and it's so powerful that spoke to you. I think it is really important that we look at this in the eyes of, of harm reduction and we look at the research. [00:39:00] Where is this message coming from?
Dominique: Absolutely.
Joanna: What is the data on in intervention? I don't necessarily have it.
Joanna: I would love to look that up. How effective is it? You know, I think these are things that are really important. They're complicated sometimes to get the correct answers on them, but you know, as a family member, I think these are important things for you to ask. Would you go into treatment for cancer treatment and not look at the studies and the data?
Joanna: I know I wouldn't.
Dominique: Right?
Joanna: Why do we treat addiction so differently? I think that's really important and I think to your point about being told to cut off. Your loved one that definitely happened to me. I was told to cut my brother off and cut my mother off because she was enabling him. I heard a great deal of that rhetoric and that is dangerous.
Joanna: Something that I hold very close to my heart is that I did talk to my brother again. Try not to cry here. The day before he died and he had [00:40:00] seen my mom and my sister and he had said it was so great. It was like old times. We had this beautiful time together and I wish you were there, and he felt loved.
Dominique: That's so powerful. I'm gonna cry. I can only imagine. What that feels like is, um, you're grieving not just the relationship, but also like the hopes and dreams that you had. I feel like there's a lot of complicated emotions that ends up circling around
Joanna: losing someone to addiction is really. Complicated in the sense that you feel you could have stopped it.
Joanna: When you lose someone to cancer, you don't feel that you could have, I mean, maybe people do, but I think oftentimes they feel like we did everything we could. It was in the hands of the medical community or the body. I think losing someone to addiction, there's a belief that's also really damaging to [00:41:00] people who love people living in addiction that you could have.
Joanna: Save that person. I know my mother feels that way.
Dominique: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: That if only we had done X, Y, and Z, we could have prevented it. We are also living at a time when the drug supply is tainted. Incredibly, incredibly dangerous. That's another stigma and another hardship that. I wish we could remove from the equation.
Dominique: Yeah, absolutely. I think especially now where you're talking about the drug supply, it's not only the drug supply, it's about how rapidly it's evolving. And you touched upon this a little bit, and I wanna just put this note out there for anyone who's listening, we talk a lot about fentanyl. There's a lot of communities and cities right now where Xylazine is entering the drug supply.
Dominique: This is not a whole conversation about that, so I'd absolutely encourage people to go do their research, but it's to show the point that if there's a demand for it, the supply will keep evolving and [00:42:00] it will just keep getting stronger and more lethal. So it's not about minimizing access to drugs, but it is really about.
Dominique: Understanding how those drugs are working and making sure that the person is getting access to the right treatment for those drugs. So I just wanna put that out there.
Joanna: Yeah. You know, and, and getting off certain drugs is really complicated too. That's all a real part of this. And both of the women that we focus on in episodes two and three of the opioid trilogy, and I'd love to talk more about episode three as well, but you know, Rena McMahon and Hir Malik had said to me in the interview had.
Joanna: My addiction been now, I don't think I'd be alive because of the fact of, of the Xylazine and Narcan not being as effective. And where fentanyl is, this is a five alarm fire.
Dominique: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And these are, these are people's lives. And people had said to me, when Matt died, do you think he committed suicide? Do you think Matt wanted to die?
Joanna: I said, [00:43:00] no, I talked to Matt. I think Matt wanted to live.
Dominique: Yeah.
Joanna: And that is a, a misconception.
Dominique: Yeah, absolutely. I think it in coming home, like there's a really interesting. Angle around wanting to live, not just for yourself, but also for your kids. And I think that story is something that is, I think for me was really powerful because we talk about, you know, when you create some kind of change, you need to do it for yourself.
Dominique: But in coming home there was a lot of her wanting to live for her daughter. Would you be able to share a little bit about that story was like, which was so drastically different from Reyna's and from Matt's.
Joanna: I really wanted to showcase a story and a conversation between a parent and a child. A parent who had been lived in addiction and that impact on a child.
Joanna: There was reports and I was reading them about children who had lost parents to overdose and to the opioid crisis, and I thought a lot about the [00:44:00] children whose parents also survived and, and what it means to heal.
Dominique: And
Joanna: how so much of recovery and we know this is healing.
Dominique: Absolutely. You know,
Joanna: and healing in a way of allowing space for both.
Joanna: And I think very similar to the way I had to listen to Matt to understand and be able to, you know, have that unconditional love and be where we were. That's the story of Samia and Tahira in episode three coming home where Tahira had lived for addiction in many years during Mia's childhood. And Samia was listening.
Joanna: To hearing what her mom went through and having empathy for the, the pain and and destruction of her mother's addiction. Right. But also creating the space to be able to say, this was really hard for me. You didn't look like other mothers did. You didn't show up always for me. And I think that's just so honest to be able to, and [00:45:00] so raw and so candid.
Joanna: Brave to be able to say that honestly. Like I can hear your experience and yet there was a lot of anger. Absolutely. And we needed to heal. And so, so many years later, they're sitting in a hair salon and Sia is doing her mother's hair and, you know, and, and listening. And Tira has a very different life story.
Joanna: You know, she grew up in Milwaukee. She grew up in the neighborhood where she also became addicted to opioids. She, you know, lived in a, a neighborhood where there's an incredible poverty. And right now where there is an increase in overdose. Death specifically in the black community. And Hir grew up in a pretty strict Islamic household, you know, and part of sort of figuring out who she was was, you know, finding herself outside of that in life and figuring that out.
Joanna: And she was in a relationship with Mia's dad, and he liked the nightlife, she said, and liked [00:46:00] other women and that. Was very painful and she had a car accident at the same time, and opioids came around and there was the physical and the psychological pain that at the same time sort of blew up in her life.
Joanna: And this was the height of pill mills and being able to get opioids from strip malls. And that was her story until that was shut down. And when that was shut down, which of course it needed to be, but. It brings people to the streets. The demand is still there. Exactly. The demand was still there. She's not gonna stop overnight.
Joanna: She has an addiction. She's severely addicted, and she ended up stealing to support her habit. She went to prison. In prison. She met a group of women who would all leave and come back, and she kept thinking about why they were forced into recovery. They were forced into recovery with no medication. And they were sick, and when they started to come out of it, they were there to tell each other their [00:47:00] stories and create a space for that.
Joanna: And so when she came out, she had to support. A family and she had to work and she was a felon and it wasn't easy. But she had this dream of creating a space for women where in the most vulnerable period, right after either coming out of rehab or detox or prison, when the desire to use is so high and so dangerous 'cause you have no tolerance.
Joanna: So absolutely dangerous that she would create a transitional home for women where they can come. And begin that road to recovery and committed to harm reduction work in Milwaukee and in her death rate right now, especially in the black community. And so I think that their story is unique and also relatable in the way of the healing that has to be done years and years and years later.
Joanna: Years and years and years later [00:48:00] still. And you know, towards the end of the film, her daughter says, I'm still processing this. And that's so real.
Dominique: Absolutely. You
Joanna: know, again, these are not quick fixes. This does not go away overnight, and that's what Tahira has dedicated her life to. And many of the women that she helps have children.
Joanna: Reuniting with their children is a big part of what Simon's house or organization focuses on, is trying to facilitate that healing and for women to get their children back. I mean, that's a real part of this. Absolutely, yeah. Is is getting your children taken away from you because of addiction? And you know, I don't know how many people know this, but in some states, if you are on methadone or Suboxone and you give birth.
Joanna: They come from DCIS, you know, to talk to you Yes. About whether or not you know, you, you can have your children, you get a positive screen even though you're in recovery. So the idea of losing your [00:49:00] children and trying to heal is a really painful part of the story of being a parent. Living in addiction and I wanted to talk about that as well.
Joanna: Absolutely. And just because who you were in, addiction is not who you are in recovery, and that is really an important part of this. If we can't believe that. We're never getting people into recovery.
Dominique: Absolutely. I think there's like this central theme of like not being good enough, right? You're not good enough to be a parent or you're not stable enough to be a parent or provide.
Dominique: Why do you think that that's such a central theme in these stories?
Joanna: It's that desire for connection to be understood, to be seen, to be loved is part of all of these stories. Rena's childhood with parents who were struggling with alcohol, the fear that she had, that she's not good enough, right? You're not good enough to get your parent not to do that.
Joanna: My brother felt like he was not good enough. He couldn't learn. So something was inherently wrong with him. Someone rejects you and they want to be with someone else. You [00:50:00] feel like something's inherently wrong with you. Right? You know, that's a pain that we're all gonna look for something, and this is the part of these stories, is we all do things.
Joanna: To try to get that feeling to go away. We all feel out those feelings, some people to different extremes, and we have different life circumstances, but that feeling of not being. Being inadequate and not being loved and needing that. I mean, that's that hungry ghost needing, needing to make that go away.
Joanna: There's so many things that we accept in a society. Alcohol being one of them. Gambling, alcohol, shopping, addiction, plastic surgery, whatever it is you, you're doing, right? If you look at it, this is a person in pain. Just trying to get out of that feeling. 'cause it's unbearable. It's unbearable. And that is what the substance [00:51:00] is doing.
Joanna: And at some point it's not about getting high anymore, it's about survival. What do you do to someone who's trying to survive? How do you support them? Yeah. If you say you suck your garbage, you're a piece of shit, you can't get it together. You can't get better. Is that gonna help them?
Dominique: You know, the concept of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and I think when we talk about people, especially people who are unhoused or living on the street or on and off the street, and our loved ones who are using substances, it's very easy to judge someone and say like, oh, why can't they just, you know, go to rehab?
Dominique: Or why can't they just, you know, get a job and stop living on the street? When you're thinking about the hierarchy of needs, the first thing that you need is like those basic needs, food, water, shelter, and if you're using substances, the substances are I think, also in that category. Absolutely. So, absolutely.
Dominique: Until you get those basic needs met, you can't even think about like, I need to build this relationship with my [00:52:00] sister or have this relationship with my kid, or think about getting a job so I can get off the street because. You can't do anything until those basic needs are met. And I think you started to allude on that a little bit with Matt's story, where he was kind of falling into like the same cycle every day, right?
Dominique: It's like you wake up so that way you can use, that way you can feel better, so that way you can get to your baseline and like, it's like rinse, cycle, repeat. This is someone just who's just trying to survive. They're not thinking about. Building that connection right away. I think those are all quote luxuries or things that happen after the fact or once they start to begin their recovery process.
Joanna: Yeah, and I remember saying to Matt like, what happens when the heroin wears off? And he is like just absolute horror and misery. It is very easy to walk by someone on the street and say, you are dirty. You're neglecting your role as a society member parent. You know, sibling, whatever it is, [00:53:00] you are always gonna be like this.
Joanna: You are making this decision rather than saying that person looks really, really sick and they're really hurting and there is a future for them. How? Do we get them there? What can we do? And it is not easy.
Dominique: Mm-hmm. For people that don't know, that's really the definition of addiction is continuing to make choices that might feel good in the moment or might solve a temporarily problem, but actually.
Dominique: Are more harmful and like that is what addiction is. It's like being able to put those harmful side effects to the side for the benefit of feeling better, and that's really such a scary place to have to be in where you're in that survival mode a hundred percent of the time. I wanna know from you as a sibling, and you had mentioned that you have another sister.
Dominique: What advice would you share with siblings who feel uncertain about how to support their [00:54:00] brother or sister that's struggling with addiction? How did you guys decide to show up for MAT during that experience?
Joanna: First of all, it is so different for everyone else, and then you have to go through your own process and it's okay to feel all the feelings.
Joanna: I think you said it early on, fear often motivates you in the wrong direction. You are so afraid of death and of losing that person that you'll do anything, anything to prevent that, and I think it's really important to understand that that is not necessarily going to help that person, right? Get. Better.
Joanna: My advice is to listen and to provide the space if you are fortunate enough.
Dominique: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: To be able to have that person sit with you wherever on the phone, doesn't matter. They, they could be however it is. Listen, don't tell them what they [00:55:00] need to do with their life. Mm-hmm. Ask, be curious. Say you are there to listen.
Joanna: One thing that I would do differently, I would say, you don't have to tell me, but if you are using and you want me to sit on the phone with you, I will do that. I learned about a helpline afterwards, after Matt had died, where someone who's using alone, which is very dangerous, can call and if they're not responsive, that person can then call.
Joanna: You know, paramedics in. I so wish. I could have said some of those things.
Dominique: Yeah, it's amazing the amount of resources that I think have actually come out in the last few years too. And I love that you're bringing this up and I, it's kind of ironic that there's a lot of overlap and similar similarities between your story and Matt and my relationship with my brother.
Dominique: I'm very involved in a lot of the harm reduction communities and Facebook groups and I learned about that hotline as well. I think it's [00:56:00] called Safe Spot, if I'm not mistaken, or that's one of them, at least in, in the Northeast. And. One day I was with my brother and his face was blue. Like I could tell he had just used, his heart rate was really low and I was getting very little response from him.
Dominique: Yeah. And I could only think about what is going on when he's using alone. My brother has survived about three overdoses, and I always think about what if no one was there? You know? Luckily he's always had someone around or someone who's been able to respond and. I actually shared the Safe Spot hotline with him.
Dominique: When I originally mentioned it to him, he kind of scoffed and he's like, really? Like, that's so like interesting. I was like, there's a lot more resources out there for people who do use drugs or alcohol. And when I framed it that way, his face kind of lit up and he was like, wow. I think he felt a little less shameful and a little less stigmatized when he knew that there were resources for people who were using drugs.
Joanna: That goes back to being that [00:57:00] safe spot, saying to someone like, I'll sit with you. I won't judge you. I think the message of society is you're condoning that behavior
Dominique: when the person I think passes away. You're not thinking about all the things that you could do to cut them off or to remove their resources.
Dominique: You're thinking about, what could I have gone to save? Right? Or what could I do? What kind of resource could I have provided with? So absolutely. That is a hundred
Joanna: percent true. Believe me. You're not thinking, could I have been tougher on that person? You're definitely not thinking about that. Yeah. You would do anything to have them back.
Joanna: Another documentary I made years ago and a mother in the film who I got close to had lost her son to addiction. I had written her a note to offer my condolences, and she had wrote me, written me back, and she said, people always ask why the addiction, and I think we should start asking why the pain? So that is probably my biggest takeaway and [00:58:00] advice to siblings is just asked by the pain.
Joanna: Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody wants to be respected. Everybody wants to think that you're on your side. Everyone wants you to truly believe that they can get better. And if you don't believe it, if you look at that person who's unhoused and who's addicted and say that's it, they're never gonna get better.
Joanna: That's what they're gonna believe.
Dominique: Yeah. Absolutely. It's about mirroring those behaviors and those thoughts that you might have about them so that they can hopefully internalize some of that too. So thank you, Joanne. I really appreciate that perspective. One. I wanna thank you so much for opening up about your brother, Matt, and what this experience has meant to put something so personal into the world.
Dominique: Your filmmaking you've created, not just stories, but they've really, I think, expanded the way we see addiction, recovery, family, [00:59:00] and for siblings like me. That representation, I think, matters so much. There's not that many stories or platforms that are shedd light on the sibling perspective, and it reminds us that we're not alone.
Dominique: That that connection is possible, not just for a sibling who is struggling, but also for the sibling who's watching on the sidelines.
Joanna: I, I appreciate too that you've created a space for siblings. I think losing Matt too, there's so much of our childhood that I so wanna talk to him about. There's stories that only he and I witnessed, and sometimes that's really painful, not being able to laugh about them and go back and revisit them in here.
Joanna: His memories of them. I just want the world to know that he was a really incredible brother and father and son, and that he was a lot more than that addiction.
Dominique: Absolutely. And for those who wanna know more about Matt and his relationship with Joanna, I will absolutely link the film in the bio and I will also link [01:00:00] the other films as well.
Dominique: That way, if you wanna go watch it, you can totally feel free. So with that being said, Joanna, I wanna thank you so much for coming onto the show today, sharing your story, and also giving your chance to be vulnerable.
Joanna: Thank you, Dominique. I appreciate what you're doing.
Dominique: Thanks for listening to this episode of For Love of Recovery. If you enjoyed this episode or know somebody who might, please leave a comment and share it. You can also join our Facebook group, siblings for Love of Recovery. If you're looking to have deeper conversations around your siblings drug or alcohol addiction, and remember whether there's hope, there's healing.