BROWN COUNTY, Ind. — Anne Marie Tiernon takes you behind the scenes of the documentary following Brown County's battle against addiction. Meet some of the people involved in the documentary, including a former drug dealer who turned his life around and found forgiveness from a family he hurt in a special 13News report.
If you stay in Brown County longer than a day visit to a gallery, a selfie with rolling hills in the background, and a sample of Quaff On lager, you learn this picturesque rural community has been unable to escape the perils of substance use and addiction. The Sheriff's department data reveals the COVID19 pandemic has amplified the problem to an all-time high.
The number of overdoses in Brown County reached a record in 2020 and increased more than five times compared to the year before according to the Brown County Sheriff's department. The department records indicate 16 runs for the population of 15,000 last year. There were three in 2019.
Sheriff Scott Southerland says the drug of choice these days is deadly. "There were pretty bad methamphetamines and now we see more of a trend towards heroin...or maybe half and half between heroin and methamphetamine," Sheriff Southerland said. "The difference is that when heroin became more prevalent, people started dying from it."
The impact on the community was staggering to Lisa Hall. After years of visiting Brown County on weekends, it wasn't until she and her husband moved there full time that she learned about the negative impact substance abuse was having on the community and the cost to law enforcement, the courts, businesses and families. It was a story she vowed to tell in a documentary called "The Addicts Wake."
"We have some pretty lofty goals for this documentary. One of them is to reduce shame and stigma. People are still held back today because of the shame and stigma that they carry...and it prevents them from getting the help they need. So, we want to boost emotional awareness of this issue. We need people to engage with people who are struggling...because this is a national issue, not just a Brown County issue," Hall said. "We want to debunk the whole idea that we can work in our entity as a silo. We have to link arms with all the entities in a community and help start a recovery journey. It's a tall order, but those are the primary goals of this documentary."
Hall created Glory Girl Productions, raised $180,000 to cover the production costs and partnered with industry veteran Michael Husain of Good Vibes Media. They've spent the last year interviewing families impacted by the crisis and community leaders tasked with finding solutions. Husain is sorting through all the footage and editing the documentary right now with a targeted nationwide release date later this year.