JUNKIE

For much of my life, I’ve been at internal war with the word “junkie.” After growing up a closeted Southern kid in a home ravaged by addiction, it was easy to use that term to try to distance myself from my family. But given that by its very definition it implies someone is “trash” or a waste of society, I found it impossible to reconcile that such waste was my own flesh and blood. With age and distance from my home, I’d learn to embrace labels put upon on me, but this process also pushed me to unpack the labels I’d put on others. And if growing up is learning to hug your past no matter how badly it hurt you, then it seems only fitting that my first feature came to fruition by returning to my roots.

The initial idea for JUNKIE came as an attempt to process my own family’s struggles with addiction, but the story took full shape when I met our lead actress, Rocky Shay—a real recovered addict who lost custody of her children, fled three rehabs of her own, and let me use her personal journals to write this story. She gave her all to the film in the hopes of reconnecting with her own kids and—in the process—defied any preconceived notions of what a “junkie” may be. Her story was not the cliché of heavy despair and hardship, but one of wild highs and lows where joy and shame walked hand-in-hand down a hopeful path.

Rocky is living proof of the flaw in labels—they do not capture us in all our beautiful complexities. With our film JUNKIE, we wanted to celebrate this by destroying labels at every turn and capturing life as it truly is: chaotic, heartbreaking, unpredictable…and a damn good time if you’re with the right people!