American Addict is an American film franchise produced by Ana Renovica and directed by Sasha Knezev, with Gregory Smith MD serving as executive producer. The central theme of the films revolves around prescription drug abuse in the United States. The franchise is being produced as a trilogy, featuring American Addict, The Big Lie: American Addict 2, with a third and final installment scheduled for release in 2018.
The first two installments of the films have been enormously successful, both domestically and internationally. The films has been screened in over thirty countries, including Netflix in the United States. American Addict was rated the second best documentary by Mic on Netflix on its list of "11 Netflix Documentaries That Will Change the Way You Think About Drugs"', ranking only below 2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner The House I Live In. Mic is a media company headquartered in New York City that reaches nearly 20 million monthly visitors and includes contributors such as Condoleezza Rice, Rand Paul and The New York Times op-editor and Bloomberg View executive editor David Shipley.
Guests appearances for American Addict include Matthew Perry, Jonathan Davis, Ron Paul], Dennis Kucinich, Peter Breggin and Barbara Starfield. It includes original music by Cypress Hill's Sen Dog and Krazy D of NWA and the Posse. In 2015 the filmmakers were presented with an award for Social Activism in Film by actress Jenna Elfman.
American Addict was nominated for Best Documentary feature at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2012. As such, it examines how the United States comprises 5 percent of the world's population but consumes 80 percent of its pharmaceutical narcotics. This startling statistic opens American Addict, deconstructing the corporatization of America's drug dependency and its impact on both capitalism and public health. Disturbing statistics and emotional first-person accounts from addicts, their families, noted doctors, scientific researchers, and police are presented.
Archival news footage recounts the frequent role of prescription narcotics in celebrity deaths—from Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, to Robin Williams, illustrate how this $64 billion industry has shaped social and political policies. A thorough indictment, American Addict leaves no facet of the pharmacological industry's influence unexplored. Noting historical examples such as the government's Bush-era revamping of the Medicaid program to benefit big business and its staggering contributions to political candidates, the film exposes the pharmaceutical industry's sway on politics and education. In The Big Lie: American Addict 2, the Obama administrations marriage to the pharmaceutical industry is revealed. These hard-to-forget films will leave you questioning medical practices and the place of "legal" drugs in our society (use this reference from #8 on my personal Wiki profile).