Prescription for Addiction
Introduction
Prescription for Addiction examines the growing impact of prescription opioid addiction across Ontario, highlighting how medications intended to treat pain can sometimes lead to dependence, withdrawal, and long-term substance use problems. Through interviews with healthcare professionals, treatment providers, people living with addiction, and community leaders, the documentary explores how opioid misuse affects individuals, families, and communities of all ages.
The film also discusses the challenges of balancing effective pain management with the risks associated with highly addictive medications. It examines the stigma surrounding addiction, the rise in prescription opioid dependency, harm reduction initiatives, and treatment options such as methadone, counselling, detoxification, and peer support programs. Along the way, Prescription for Addiction raises important questions about prevention, access to care, and how communities can respond to an evolving public health crisis.
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Quotes
"Withdrawal is, when the drug disappears, they now feel what it's like to have created a shutdown in their own pain-reducing mechanisms. Everything's going to ache. You're going to ache all over – you're going to start having headaches, you're going to have other things like anxiety, depression, you will just feel very agitated, on edge, restless."
"I actually had one pharmacist ask me if I was weaning myself off of heroin and I got so mad. It was very difficult to deal with because everybody has this preconceived notion that if you're addicted, then well, you must have been you must have liked taking it or something."
"Many older people have no knowledge of medications. They were not brought up to the knowledge that people have today and another thing is [that] they put physicians on a pedestal and they are not God."
"We have seen a rather dramatic increase in the prevalence rates of opiate dependency and opiate addiction within this community and within our region. Even two years ago, the rate of opiate dependency, in terms of folks that were coming for treatment was at about 10%, and even at that that time it was primarily your street drugs such as heroin. In the last two years, we've seen a dramatic shift toward prescription opiates, and this is all age groups – youth, older adults, adults. The stats are now approaching 50% of the clients that are coming through our services are opiate dependent and struggling with opiate dependency."1
"Our job is to provide safe injection supplies to injection drug users in the city of Thunder Bay, also to provide harm reduction services for the entire community by picking up publicly discarded syringes, making sure that injection supplies are disposed of properly and to help reduce the spread of bloodborne diseases among the injection drug using population."
"Often times with doctors, GPs (general practitioners) who are very well-intentioned [who] want to help, and their first instinct is to cut the person off completely. They say, that's it, you get no more oxys, that'll cure your addiction. It doesn't work that way. That often drives them to other sources to get the pills that they physically are craving for at that point … they actually need that pill to keep from getting sick. So, when the doctors do that, as well intentioned as they may be, it just increases the drug trade on the street."
"Their idea around chronic substance use or addictive behavior is coming at it from a moral point of view, instead of that the person has an illness that needs to be treated as an illness. Addiction has been around since the very first substance was ever introduced and it's not going away. It needs to be looked at with less morality and more reality."
"We used to have problems with prescription drugs; it was always there but it was very small. In the past year, year and a half, it just exploded. Kids from 14 to people that are in their 70s are addicted to this stuff on reserve now."2
"What I'm really concerned about is our children, our babies, they're recognizing what they see at home."
"The thing about methadone that's special is it's an ultra long-acting opioid. Methadone doesn't cause a person to be high, and it also prevents them from going into withdrawal, so they don't have to worry about when they're going to take their next dose or when they're going to get their next dose. I can see changes in people very quickly after they start on the program. They come in to see me one or two weeks after starting and their faces are brighter; their mood is better."3
"Other treatment options include counselling, self-help groups like Narcotics Anonymous, detoxification programs, outpatient programs, tapering protocols, and maybe even going away to therapeutic communities, which take people in for six months or longer, where they really work on that person getting away from drugs."
1 The opioid crisis has evolved through several distinct phases. While the early rise in opioid dependence was driven largely by increased prescribing of opioid medications, later waves were marked by growing heroin use and, more recently, the widespread presence of illicit fentanyl in the drug supply.
2 Indigenous communities continue to be disproportionately affected by opioid-related harms in Canada. Investigations have linked rising opioid dependence to decades of increasing prescription opioid use, with First Nations and Inuit communities among those most heavily impacted.
3 Methadone remains one of the most widely used treatments for opioid use disorder in Canada. National monitoring through 2025 estimated that approximately 65,000 to 75,000 Canadians were receiving methadone as part of opioid agonist therapy programs.
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Brenda H.
BA Psych, Grad. Cert. Addictions & Mental Health
Driven by a deep personal connection to these topics, I created AMH Resources to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and everyday support. I watch, read, and summarize a wide range of free resources to help you navigate the overwhelming amount of information available and find what resonates with your journey.