Louis is life. You won’t want to miss this.
Everyone has their favourite Louis Theroux documentary, we’ve even listed some of ours here, but one of his most heartbreaking features was when the documentarian examined the toll that crystal meth has taken on several addicts in Fresno, California.
Simply put, some of the stories were so heartbreaking that it’s impossible not to be moved. We vividly remember people telling Theroux that they saw no issue in using the addictive substance around their own children. Drug use and addiction became their norm.
As mentioned previously, Theroux has three new documentaries airing on the BBC this year and the first one will be broadcast by BBC Two on 8 October at 9pm.
In Louis Theroux: Dark States – Heroin Town, the documentarian will examine America’s love affair with prescription painkillers.
As dependency on opiates increases, how has this impacted those that are most at risk?
Following a crackdown on their over-prescription, where does this leave the two million Americans who have developed a habit for these high-strength painkillers?
With the pills now becoming increasingly expensive and scarce on the black market, vast numbers of Americans have turned to the cheaper and stronger opiate: heroin. The drug now claims more lives in the US than either car accidents or gun crime. And, for the first time in over two decades, life expectancy in the US is declining – largely attributed to the rise in fatal heroin overdoses.
The drug now claims more lives in the US than either car accidents or gun crime, and for the first time in over two decades, life expectancy in the US is declining – largely attributed to the rise in fatal heroin overdoses.
In the documentary, we travel with Louis through Huntington, West Virginia, as he embeds himself in an Appalachian community that is being devastated and stretched to its limits by widespread heroin use. With one in ten babies in the city born dependent on opiates and a fatal overdose rate 13 times the national average, this is the epicentre of the most deadly drug epidemic in US history.
We’re definitely going to be tuned in.
