How a Wonder Drug Got Sidelined

My documentary is done!

I’ve finally finished Antagonist, my feature-length documentary and directorial debut. It’s about a wonder drug called naltrexone, best known as the Vivitrol shot, which has helped countless people beat opioid and alcohol addictions, but has been trashed in the media and ignored by doctors.

Here’s our brand new official trailer:

Filmed over three years, Antagonist features interviews with experts like NIDA director Nora Volkow, former Drug Czars Jerome Jaffe and Robert DuPont, academics like Anna Lembke, and journalists including Maia Szalavitz.

It follows the trials and tribulations of a salty-yet-inspiring character named Percy Menzies (above) who runs a St. Louis recovery center and almost single-handedly battles to bring naltrexone into the mainstream.

Filmed largely on the drug-addled streets of St. Louis and San Francisco, the documentary also features archival footage from the Narcotic Farm, a federal prison in Kentucky where scientists experimented on prisoners, and where naltrexone was developed.*

*Methadone and buprenorphine were developed there as well!

For alcohol use disorder, naltrexone is particularly effective, and Antagonist talks with Dr. Joe Volpicelli, who helped secure its FDA approval for this purpose, as well as users whose lives were saved by naltrexone.

Antagonist also follows street drug users like Brett Rudloff, who lost everything to fentanyl and other drugs, for at time living alone in an industrial suburb with only a dumpster lid to protect him from the elements.

After he and his friend Jeff bought identical pills from a dealer, Jeff took his pill and died. Thankfully Brett didn’t take his, but the incident served as a wakeup call for Brett to start naltrexone, and he’s been sober ever since.

Despite naltrexone’s many success stories, the backlash against it has been fierce, led by attacks from groups including the methadone lobby and 12 step programs. In the media, naltrexone is almost never mentioned alongside the other FDA-approved medications for opioid addiction. When it is, it’s usually disparaged.

Antagonist is a work of investigative journalism that pulls no punches, a follow-up to my best-selling book Fentanyl, Inc. that seeks to understand why we are ignoring such an incredible tool to fight addiction, in the midst of the worst drug crisis in American history, and during a time when the alcohol death rate is even worse.

The answer, I conclude, is that naltrexone has been stymied by junk science, big-money interests, and poorly-informed journalism. There isn’t “one medicine to rule them all,” as advocates of other treatment drugs might have you believe.

Instead, we must use every tool in our kit to fight the addiction scourge.

Antagonist is not yet available to the public. But it can be licensed to organizations, schools, and private groups. If you would like to license it or sponsor a screening at your home or company, please email me at ben.westhoff@gmail.com