Review: Heroin(e), A Netflix Doc About Girl Power And The Heroin Epidemic

Rose Rucoba
Staff Writer

Among one of the more heart-wrenching films on Netflix is the 40-minute documentary, “Heroin(e).”

The clever title is a play on words in relation to the film’s three protagonists: Jan Rader, Deputy Chief of the Huntington Fire Department, Judge Patricia Keller of Cabell County Drug Court, and Necia Freeman, founder of the Brown Bag Ministry—an organization that gives out food to prostitutes and girls on the street.

All three women live in Huntington, West Virginia, known as the “drug overdose capital” of America and work against all odds to save those in their community from the heroin epidemic and, by doing so, become heroines themselves.

While the documentary is not something that the average person would choose to watch on a Friday night, or any night for that matter, it does shed light on a very important issue in America—the heroin and opioid epidemic.
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It is painful to watch and yet hard to look away, and not because of the graphic overdoses it shows, but because of the three women who work so hard to mend their community and inspire so much hope for such a hopeless cause.

Throughout the film, audiences watch Jan Rader responding to 9-1-1 calls regarding heroin overdoses, watch Judge Keller guide addicts with a firm yet understanding hand through a recovery program, and watch Necia Freeman connect with women and girls tossed aside by society.

By the end of the documentary, audiences can see how it all comes together, how all three women are in separate jobs, leading separate lives with separate purposes, and yet each contribute in her own unique way to the same cause.

Near the end, they all come together in Judge Keller’s courtroom to hold a graduation ceremony for recovering addicts that graduated from the rehab program.

The very last scene of the doc is the same as its first, Jan Rader racing down the street in her police car, sirens blaring, going to respond to yet another 9-1-1 call for a heroin overdose.

For such a cyclical, pessimistic ending, however, there is a kind of hope in seeing Jan’s relentlessness in her duty to respond, and knowing that she and the others will never stop, will persevere in their broken community as the heroines of heroin.
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Photo courtesy of Paste Magazine.