Intense, repulsive, yet hypnotic. The film itself is like a drug. It's a trip, and it's a detox all in one.

The first few minutes are rough and not-inviting: dirty streets, shady faces, and a fast talking main character. But after the first couple detox scenes of vomit and hallucination, we listen more carefully to him. Can it be that he's got a point? His ramblings are rough-edged like broken glass, arrogant, but of equal measure, self-critical. He appreciates love, but at the same time loves the thrill that the risk of death gives to the mix. He's dangerous with love.

This strange man, ex-drug addict, self-appointed detoxer of junkies, can he be each of us? If we stripped away our surface lives, the material and immaterial layers we wrap ourselves in, if we chose to live wide open and listen for the true heartbeat of being alive, would we be as raw as this man? Would we be bubbling with ambition to draw strangers out of their own self-made hells, simply because we'd somehow stumbled across an escape route from our own? Would we be honestly excited about the new lives each of these poor souls teeter upon the brink of, but just as stoked by the dangerous adventure, the dare of accepting the duty and potential fatal risk of the attempt to free them?

For the most part, the camera is just as raw and uncinematic. Still, again, some of the visual compositions are artistic, stark, painful, poetic with the occasional animation to "suggest" the psychedelic world unfolding inside someone's head. Nor can much comfort be found in the purposely discordant, purposely entrancing music. Breaking addiction isn't pretty, the film takes no steps toward pretending it is, but does immerse itself narrowly, yet specifically, into the plight of this one raw man treating heroine addicts with ibogaine (African shaman's hallucinogen) in an effort to eliminate the nasty sickness associated with detox.

-- Books by Author/Illustrator Ross Anthony --