Thursday March 23, 2023 | 7:30pm - 9pm

At the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102

FREE

Swallow THIS, a short documentary, shows how the pandemic liberated people who take methadone and the need to abolish the methadone clinic system. Film screening + directors Helen Redmond and Marilena Marchetti in-person.

Swallow THIS: A Documentary About Methadone and COVID-19  reveals what happened in methadone clinics during the pandemic. Federal agencies lifted rigid restrictions on take-home doses and everyone was eligible for 14 or 28 days of medication. No more standing in line six days a week to drink methadone. It was LIBERATION! 

Directors Marilena Marchetti & Helen Redmond traveled across the country to document the impact of this unprecedented change. In bracingly honest interviews with patients, clinic staff, and drug-user activists from Connecticut to Tennessee, the filmmakers found that the new take-homes policy was adopted inconsistently and then ended. 

Methadone clinics were created in the 1970s during the Nixon presidency and were designed to control, surveil, and punish patients. Now is the time to shut down these carceral facilities and allow methadone to be picked up at the pharmacy. It is time to free people who take methadone. 

Swallow THIS is a call to action to abolish methadone clinics.

After the screening, join the directors for a Q & A conversation. 

Runtime: 27min. View trailer here.  

Marchetti and Redmond's feature-length documentary is Liquid Handcuffs: A Documentary To Free Methadone.