J is for Junkie
J is for Junkie comes as a hard-hitting and beautifully shot documentary on crack and being homeless. Filmed in “The Living Room” in Atlanta, a small cove tucked in behind a Texaco gas station, the documentary captures African-American men and women opening up to Corey Davis, a young filmmaker with an artistic flare and an anthropologist’s care for documenting lived reality.
Released May 22, 2011. 41 min. Director: Corey Davis. Documentary film.
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Audio is terrible on this one!
Why is there an Ad above for where to find Crystal meth? Weird just weird….
Oh my god the story of that man who went to jail for 20 years trying to kill the murderer (yes. Murderer) of his wife and child make me feel sick.
So the soundtrack overpowers the interviewees on this one. I thought it had some promise there at the beginning, but it kind of tapered off into a weird how-to on buying and smoking crack and past regrets and a “The More You Know…” type of message. Just not a big fan. I did like Judy and wanted to see her get out. The homeless guy who had lost his wife and daughter really made me sad. I felt horrible for all of them, but him especially. You have to wonder what makes people keep on keeping on when they have that much sadness in their life.
I guess Mr. Davis did bring some light to the staggering numbers of homeless people in this country as well as drug addiction but I just wasn’t sure if the film was for us; or him. Hmm…
Just heartbreaking. Drug addicts are victims. The system we have in place does everything is can to perpetuate the spread of drug-dealing and addiction. Otherwise they would simply medicalize all narcotics, as they should be and not have laws that take nearly worthless drugs and convert them ounce for ounce into highly sought after commodities as valuable as pure gold. That is what has given rise to the nightmare we see on city streets the world over, today, and in Mexico, parts of which have become literal war zones. With the working classes paying the heaviest price. One need not look any further than Wall St, whose international banking coffers take in about half a trillion dollars annually. The rest of the profits go into local economies and governments. Who got Pablo Escobar’s billions? The Colombian government did. And that is just one case. forfeiture laws are abused as a matter of course. We would not have laws on the books that protect bankers from money laundering charges while we take the true victims, an already marginalized segment of society and turns them into criminals simply for having a disease of the brain known as addiction, and or for the most-part non-violent drug offenders.
Every major bank has repeatedly faced drug money laundering charges yet not one banker has gone to jail, this despite some incredibly egregious examples of criminality on their part,, -like one HBSC case which involved suitcases filled with cash being brought over from Mexico by bank employees. The bank pays what amounts to a small fee and the trade continues. The drug war is a farce whose only design is to spread drugs and addiction and far and wide as possible. Read ‘Chasing The Scream’ by Johann Hari for an overview of the history of the ‘war on drugs’ and the one country (Portugal) that had among the worst addiction rates on earth, who medicalized drugs and realized that connection, work, and community were central requirements needed for addicts to be able to regain their self-respect. In just ten years addiction rates had been cut by 50%. It is not that policymakers dont know these things. It’s that the profits are so huge that the policymakers and their bankster puppeteers have no desire to see things change.
Small bit of trivia on the origins of the word ‘junkie’ For heroin addicts in the early 20th century, (once the war on addicts was well underway, with all its racist abuses and overtones) many were reduced to scouring through junkyards looking for anything they could sell to get their daily fix (just to make them functional once they’re at that point), mostly copper wire, were called ‘junkies’ for that reason. The word ended up meaning anyone who was addicted to heroin. In fact the history of opiate addiction is also rife with many accomplished individuals. One of the foremost pioneers in 19th century internal medicine and surgery, a man responsible for many advances in the field, was a life-long opiate addict. There have been preachers, lawyers, doctors, judges, people from all walks of life, who having become addicted still managed, because of their resources and social status enabled to lead highly productive lives. Source: ‘A History of Opium’ by Martin P Boothe