BALTIMORE, Md. (WMAR) — “Beautiful Boy” starring Steve Carell shines an always needed light on the darkness of addiction.
Tuesday night was the National Day of Action on Addiction, and in celebration select theaters across the country showed the movie.
The Parkway Theatre was selected to show the movie for free for a select group of people at the front of fighting addiction in the city of Baltimore.
In attendance were members of the Isiah House, a recovery home where a group of men do everything together on their road to recovery.
“We live off each other we help each other that’s what we do all day,” said Harry Holbrook. “That’s what we do talk about our problems and what we are going through.”
Brian Johnson is the house manager at Isiah House.
“The stigma attached to the opioid epidemic, and it’s been an epidemic for years on end, to bring it out into the mainstream and the forefront,” said Johnson. “To be fully recognized so people can see it for what it really is so maybe we can do something a little bit better then what we’ve been doing about it and find some cure for it one day.”
Amazon Studios partnered up with the addiction help organizations all over the country like the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of Maryland to show the movie for free all over the country.
Diana Morris, the Director of the Open Society Institute of Baltimore, said it’s important to put addiction out in the open.
“It’s really important for treatment to be really accessible and for there not to be a lot of barriers to it,” said Morris. “So that people can get it whenever they are ready to get it. In the meantime, there’s harm reduction approaches so people can use less or else be harmed less by the drugs they are using and the policies so that it’s treated as a disease and not a criminal justice problem.”
After the movie a live stream with started with the writers of the memoir that the movie is based on and the members of the audiences watching all over the country.
Through the screen they did a live Q and A with the writers.
