Aug 6, 2020
In the summer of 2014 Chris bicycled across Canada from Victoria, BC to St. Johns, Newfoundland. With a group of young filmmakers they created a documentary title Inspire about the Canadian prescription drug epidemic, revealing just how much this issue has affected us. When Chris was a teenager, his father was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, a neuro-degenerative illness that his grandmother also had. After the diagnosis his father turned to alcohol to ease his pain and fear of what the disease would do to him. As Huntington’s disease is hereditary, Chris has a 50% chance of being diagnosed with it one day. After watching his grandmother break down, he remembers hearing his father say that he would never let himself get to the state his grandmother did if he was ever diagnosed. As Chris’ father’s disease progressed he fell further into the depths of addiction, ultimately committing suicide in a motel room. This is when Chris began to self medicate and his life fell apart. He started by using a couple Percocets, which seemed to calm him down. He hid this from most people, including his girlfriend at the time, whom he loved dearly. As the drugging escalated into roughly 5 x 80mg OxyContin a day, his deception grew exponentially. He began to manipulate and take advantage of people’s trust, telling outlandish lies. His family and friends were ashamed of him, the girl who loved him had left, he had lost his father to suicide and he lost a lot of money, -roughly six figures in cash. That’s when he thought to himself, if my dad saw me now, he would be so disappointed. He finally decided to get help. After getting clean, Chris partnered with Shyah, an aspiring filmmaker and together they planned to turn an 8000km bike ride from the Pacific to the Atlantic Coast into a feature-length documentary titled Inspire. He wanted to show people that it was possible to beat an addiction, and that just as he lived my dreams, so too could others live theirs.