DN:FILM American Relapse

AMERICAN RELAPSE follows a pair of recovering heroin addicts who have transformed themselves into passionate “junkie hunters.” Allie Severino and Frankie Holmes dedicate themselves to getting every drug addict they can reach into treatment, and while they are paid a fee to market facility recovery services, Severino professes a major distinction between their efforts and the work conducted by too many other hunters in target-rich Del Rey, Florida. Del Rey, where the doc unfolds, is known as the “Recovery Capital” because of the area’s huge number of recovery clinics; lots of dollars flow through the town’s loosely regulated drug-treatment centers and, as the film makes abundantly clear, where there’s money, there are those eager to exploit any opportunity to some of it. For those opportunists, the first question they might ask of someone desperate for aid is, “What kind of insurance do you have?” Allie, on the other hand, first asks a panicked caller: “Are you in a safe place?”

The film takes place over a 72-hour Del Rey weekend, offering an incisive and fascinating sketch of how harrowing and stressful it can be to live in the world of addiction, the more so when lax regulatory oversight; new insurance rules; corrupt recovery-center owners; and profit seekers come together to form a toxic miasma where cash grabs—rather than concern about what’s best for an addict—are so prevalent. It’s a startling testament to the toll their stressful work can exact from people like Allie and Frankie. The two believe no addict should be abandoned, even those in the bleakest circumstances. They search for signs, for some glimmer of hope, that a conversation, a human exchange—or a drive-thru burger, as the case may be—may be enough to provide an opening so that they can, for a few moments, make a pitch for a sober life. Even when they succeed, the road isn’t smooth: For Del Rey, an unfortunate byproduct of being known as the “recovery capital of America” is that the town is now identified as well as the “relapse capital."

The film shines brightest when it shows the struggles between addiction and recovery. Police, attorneys and counselors are not the ones who embody this wrenching story and bring it to light. Instead, the filmmakers rely on street-level images and stories of addicts to portray their complex, challenging lives. Allie and Frankie are ardently committed to their cause—Frankie and his mother run the foundation “Fuck Heroin” while Allie is in her tenth year of recovery when we meet her—and that their flaws are on display as much as their heroics contributes to the impact that the doc makes.