Meet Debra Gonsher Vinik: director of “Attention Must Be Paid: Women Lost in the Opioid Crisis”
Filmmaker, who moonlights as gratitude guru, shines light on gender disparities and need for more women-specific services
This Q&A, facilitated by Jeremiah Gardner of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, was originally published for Hazelden Betty Ford’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
Debra Gonsher Vinik, PhD, is a film producer, writer and director who lives just outside of New York City and founded Diva Communications in 1985. She has produced and written 21 documentaries, including six Emmy winners. Dr. Gonsher Vinik’s newest feature film, Attention Must Be Paid: Women Lost in the Opioid Crisis — a call-to-action for more women-specific addiction treatment and recovery services nationwide — an issue also important to former First Lady Betty Ford. The new film was also edited into a two-hour series airing on ABC-affiliated stations in May and September 2023 under the title Listen to the Silence: Women Trapped in the Opioid Epidemic. Afterward, an hour-long version will also air on PBS stations. But first, the Betty Ford Center hosted an exclusive advance screening on its campus in Rancho Mirage, California. The special film event was held on Dec. 2, 2022, as part of the Betty Ford Center’s Recovery and Mental Health Awareness Hour series. It included a post-film discussion with Dr. Gonsher Vinik and other experts, moderated by recovery advocate and three-time Olympic gold medalist Carrie Bates. Dr. Gonsher Vinik also runs the website Mincha Moment: Taking Time to Be Grateful, which is devoted to the daily practice of gratitude via short web videos — a great resource for us all.
Q: What inspired or motivated you to create Attention Must be Paid?
I really don’t have one pat answer. There were a multitude of things in play. Probably first is that over the course of my career, I have had a proclivity toward looking at issues from a woman’s perspective. Every woman has a story about when she first realized there were different rules for men and women, which influences everything they do after that. For me, it was in high school when I was the only junior working on the senior yearbook. When it came time to name the new editor-in-chief, rather than appoint the one person who had been working there, they designated a boy who had never shown any interest or been remotely involved. I was told that “realistically’ it would be impossible for a girl to negotiate with the printer. Skipping forward, my doctoral dissertation was on Stereotypes of Women in Contemporary Drama, and over the 21 documentaries I’ve written and produced, a quarter of them have looked at how specific social justice issues impact women.
Second, and actually an ancillary to the first, I believe that the stigma associated with women who suffer from any kind of substance use disorder (SUD) is far greater than for men. With men, it’s “Oh, that’s just Uncle Joey — too much (drinking, drugging, whatever) again. You know him.” But with a woman — and God forbid a MOTHER — well, then all bets are off. They are viewed as irredeemable — so much so that in half the states in this country, pregnant women can have their children taken away. I am not aware of any state that takes the child away from a father if the father suffers from an SUD.
And then thirdly, I think that at a much earlier time in my life, when I was far less comfortable in my own skin, I verged precariously close to using substances (alcohol, cocaine) in ways that were clearly (but not to me at the time!) harmful to me. I feel extremely grateful that I did not have a genetic predisposition, because as a physically abused child, I certainly experienced the childhood trauma that might have precipitated a dependence on substances.
Q: What do you hope viewers take away from the film?
There are three major takeaways.
- Opioid use disorder is a disease that afflicts women as well as men. There is so little media coverage of women’s plight, that when I conducted focus groups for the film, a quarter of the people said they hadn’t even heard that opioid use disorder (OUD) was a problem for women.
- OUD is an equal-opportunity disorder — meaning it is not relegated to people from a different economic, racial or geographic background than you. Anyone can, if prescribed opioids for an extended period, develop a physiological dependence that may spin out of their control.
- People need to contact their elected state officials and demand that money from opioid litigation settlements be used for medications, programs and other resources directly related to women. For far too long, resources have been divvied up by men, for men. Women have received the short end of the stick. This gender inequity must stop now.
Q: What are the most striking and harmful gender disparities you discovered?
I’ve already touched on several of them. But let’s not forget, opioid medications were never initially tested on women. The effects on women were not known until relatively recently. So, recovery programs specifically designed for women are severely lacking. There are so few resources for pregnant and parenting women, it borders on the criminal. New programs and initiatives must be implemented in all states, and should have been years ago! If one looks at the SAMSHA website findtreatment.gov, there is no specific filter to find a women’s treatment program — completely indicative of women’s invisibility.
Q: What solutions stand out in your mind?
The “solutions” are quite clear, at least to me. As I previously indicated, resources for women must be prioritized. Medication-assisted treatment, counseling, a supportive community, CONTINUITY OF CARE. We cannot let a woman leave a treatment center after 30 days without having a comprehensive plan of care when she gets home. We must be cognizant that most women who suffer from OUD also suffer from depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, or a history of trauma — but women barely are treated for these. Trauma-informed therapy must be the norm, not an anomaly.
Q: The documentary includes both tragic stories and stories of hope? In what ways do you think both are necessary to inspiring action among viewers?
In one of the earliest cuts of the film, we ended on the upbeat stories of women who had, at this point, managed to win the battle with their disease. Although it was heartwarming and even uplifting, it didn’t ring true. Meaning, yes, we are thrilled to share stories of survivors of this disease, but unfortunately, there are still 107,000 people who died of an opioid-related overdose just last year. To have a Pollyanna ending, and to let people walk out of a theatre feeling, “no problem here, nothing for me to do,” would have been a grave injustice.
Q: In addition to filmmaking, you devote time to spreading gratitude. Stopping to consider what we’re grateful for is a valuable discipline for many folks in recovery, so I really appreciate the wonderful resource that is your Mincha Moment website. What has gratitude brought to your life?
Many years ago, it dawned on me that, in an instant, everything in your life could change. That while you were complaining about whatever, the next day you might step off the curb wrong, fall and sustain a horrible injury; or lose the job that you always whined about; or develop a hideously painful toothache. Then you’d look back and think, “How come I didn’t appreciate all that I had when I had it? How come I didn’t appreciate my job, my ability to walk, my life without tooth pain?” Or as Joni Mitchell sings in “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” I realized I needed to be more conscious of everything wonderful in my life. So, I set aside a time, 2:30 pm every day, to stop and look around, and to take in all that I have.
When I started this practice, I put an alarm on my running watch — it would go off, and no matter what I was doing, I would stop and take it all in, the lay of the land. Eventually, our friends and colleagues knew that at 2:30 pm everything would halt for a moment or two. We paused to appreciate friends, health, cats, whatever. My husband’s golf buddies know the drill, as do our work associates. Now of course, it’s our cell phones that go off at 2:30.🤣 Don’t misunderstand me: taking time to be grateful doesn’t mean I don’t have days that are awful — the audio mix doesn’t sound the way I wanted; or I’m running around to a hospital taking care of a sick friend while trying to finish a grant, all the while making ratatouille for a get-together, but I’m not pleased with the eggplant my husband brought home; or I’m so tired I feel like puking, and I just hate some of the people I have to work with — days when it’s easy to think, “What do I have to be grateful for?” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, and I’ve changed the pronouns: “People have problems, And the more complicated, he/she is, the deeper the problems. This is our distinction, to have problems, to face problems.” So, I breathe into my problems, my difficulties. And then I focus on things I am grateful for — laying with Barnes, my big fluffy Persian, as he purrs, draped across my neck like a feather boa; tasting a new chocolatier’s malted milk balls; hearing my husband singing one of the many crazy silly songs we’ve made together; and laughing. Laughing. And I’m grateful for that moment. Because that moment is all I have. And it’s so damn good.
