Culture of Addiction Explored in Eye-Opening Documentary ‘Prescription Thugs’

Sandra Miska

In his debut documentary “Bigger Stronger Faster*,” filmmaker Chris Bell examined the use of performance-enhancing drugs in competitive sports and the struggle he and his own brothers experienced with steroid use. His latest film “Prescription Thugs” also tackles an issue close to home, prescription drug abuse. Bell’s brother Mike, who wrestled professionally under the name Mad Dog, died of a drug overdose in 2008.

Bell begins by exploring prescription drug abuse, mainly painkillers, by athletes by interviewing those in his inner circle including members of his family and wrestlers who knew his brother, plus UFC fighters and a former NFL player. They discuss how shockingly easy it is to come by pills in that world, which fosters a culture an addiction. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, Chris Bell reveals to his own parents that he battled a prescription drug addiction following hip replacement surgery.

Bell presents a number of staggering facts about prescription drug use in the United States, including that Americans consume 75 percent of the world’s pharmaceuticals and that these legal drugs now take more lives in this country than car wrecks. But who’s responsible for the situation in the United States of Addiction? Bell is determined to get to the root of the problem first looking at the doctors who prescribe the drugs. As we learned from cases involving celebrities like Michael Jackson, there are unscrupulous physicians out there who can be bought.

However, the real villain of this doc is Big Pharma. Bell acknowledges that the business of pushing drugs for profit goes back to the Middle Ages.

Although no one currently working in big pharma would agree to be interviewed by Bell, he does speak with former sales rep Gwen Olsen, and she gives the straight facts about the real motives of her former employers in the doc’s most revealing interview.

Bell not only looks at the problems but searches for solutions toward the end of the film when he visits his local California congressman Ted Lieu and urges him to take action regarding the selling of drugs such as oxytocin on Craigslist. In order to accomplish this task, Bell makes one more startling revelation about himself.

With his everyman appearance and personable interview style, Bell has garnered favorable comparisons to documentarians Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. He effectively makes his case not by bombarding the viewer with flashy graphics and figures, but from drawing from his experiences.

“Prescription Thugs” premieres Jan. 22 in select theaters and iTunes.