Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.

Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.

GALO: I definitely agree. The film discusses at length our culture’s “fear of missing out.” And yet at the beginning of the film, you talk about all of the icons that have died from prescription drug overdoses. Realizing then that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, what do you think is the solution to our society’s anti-average Joe syndrome?

CB: I think that American culture really pushes the idea of the American dream. But the American dream has shifted into this ugly, dirty thing. It’s not what it used to be. I have a younger brother who went from nothing to being a multimillionaire. He loves his wife and his kids. He has no grandeurs of being in a movie, being famous or anything like that. I put him in my movie but I think that’s the American dream. We’ve lost sight of what the real American dream is: Get married, have a wife and kids, be wealthy and successful. But now, it’s just all about the money. It’s about the money, cheating on your wife, not loving and supporting your kids. It’s about something that is really dirty — and that’s money, which they say is the root of all evil.

GALO: I also think there is just a lot of greed in our society, and I’m not sure where it stems from.

CB: Well, you know, in the movie Wall Street (1987), they say greed is good. We were taught that it’s OK to be wealthy; it’s OK to make a lot of money. Ronald Reagan taught us not to feel guilty about it. The thing is, it’s great to make a lot of money but there are also great things that people can do with it, which does not include Bentleys or other things. They should concentrate on how they can help people.

GALO: Oh, I agree.

CB: It would make them feel a lot better. I think that greed comes from the same thing that prescription drug addiction comes from: “I wasn’t good enough as a kid, nobody likes me. I’m going to make so much money and I’m going to mask all of the pain.” And you see it all the time, when these people kill themselves, it’s because they lead miserable lives a lot of the time. Those who are successful and wealthy are giving it away and helping other people. Those are the people that are truly happy.

GALO: You become very fulfilled by doing that.

CB: Exactly, and they teach us that through AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). When I went through rehab, the number one thing they taught was that we needed to get to the 12th step. Because the 12th step means that you have to teach all you’ve learned to someone else. There aren’t a lot of programs like that out there.

GALO: Oh, so that’s how you get sponsors and things like that? That’s a very powerful learning tool.

CB: It doesn’t work for everybody, but it’s one of the most amazing programs on earth. I was always scared to walk into an AA meeting, now I run to them. Nobody judges you. You can walk in 20-minutes late with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth, drunk, and no one judges you. They’ll just say, “Hey, brother, do you need help?” You need a place that people can walk into and no one cares what they are doing. People come in drunk all the time. People come in crying, desperate and begging for help — and you just help them. They might come in drunk 10 times and you still help them. It’s an amazing program.

GALO: You’re absolutely right; no one wants to be judged. Plus, it can be an uphill battle for some, one where it takes a while to get to that point when you have a strong willpower and are in control of your emotions.

CB: I always love when people say, “I don’t care what anybody thinks.” They are always the people who care the most. I have to admit, I totally care what people think, every day. There are so many times I bite my tongue because I want people to like me, and if I told the truth, they might not. But that’s hiding your feelings.

GALO: Toward the end of the film, you came clean about the fact that you were still struggling with your own addictions. Do you feel like making this film was a cry for help in some way?

CB: I said it in the film. I raised all the money to do this movie and it was like, “Oh shit! I’m still doing this.” It was definitely a cry for help, a subconscious cry for help. I was stuck. I was like, “I can’t tell anyone that I’m a drug addict because they would be like, ‘Well, why are you making this movie?’” And I’m like, “for my brother.” And [they’d say], “yeah, but he died from the same thing that you’re doing.” It’s a weird thing because I will always say, “I loved my brother and to honor him, I would never go down that path.” But right before he died, I had another hip surgery (because one of my hip surgeries that I had before was botched) and they gave me more pills, and I just fell right back into it.

GALO: Well, like you said, it starts from really trying to monitor pain and it spirals into something else. You lose control of it before you even know it.

CB: And it happens so many times. Most people that I know who do heroin, they start out with a sports injury and they get into Vicodin and Oxycontin. A lot of people just get sick of taking pills, so they start taking heroin — and heroin is cheap. And the pills are cheap. Speaking of affluent people, if you have insurance, you’re not paying hundreds of dollars for these pills. You might be buying them from the black market for expensive prices, but for the most part, people have insurance and they get them for $10.

GALO: Well, it depends on what insurance coverage you have. But yes, some insurance companies definitely cover a fair amount.

CB: Yes, and it’s really cheap, they make a lot of them. I don’t even know what the exact number is because they really don’t even publish the numbers. But isn’t it obvious, you see all of these people walking around and they’re checked out. They’re not getting them from a doctor; it’s pretty obvious that they’re making way too many pills.

GALO: When you spoke with one of your brother’s wrestling pupils, he confessed that he once gave Mike some drugs. In the film, you told him that you didn’t blame him because you understood the culture of sports. Do you blame anyone, though?

CB: Big Pharma can’t do it to you. Big Pharma didn’t necessarily kill my brother; my brother had to take the pills. But what I do think killed him was this culture. He always wanted to be better — that’s why I called my first movie Bigger, Stronger, Faster*. It’s the quest for things that we can’t get our hands on, but that we want desperately. So if I blame anything, it’s really the culture. At WWE, I remember going backstage and seeing people take 10 pills at a time — just chew them up in their mouths, swallow some water, and go out to the ring.

GALO: Oh my goodness.

CB: So what happened with the WWE is that when Eddie Guerrero died from what they think might have been a relapse, it didn’t really come out, and no one ever really talks about it. And then the whole Chris Benoit thing happened — he killed his whole family. He was on like 10 prescription drugs and no one ever talks about that. It was not just steroids, he was on Xanax and all of these other painkillers, and I think that’s a big contributor to why he killed his family. It’s also some sort of mental rage that he had that wasn’t about steroids really. They always focus on the wrong thing and they never really get to the bottom of it. After that happened, Vincent McMahon set up a wellness program. So a lot of the wrestlers that I know — a lot of the friends that I have — have gone to rehab on WWE’s tab. They send guys to rehab. They don’t fire them anymore — they help them, which I think is great.

GALO: Yes, that’s a wonderful change.

CB: The NFL is like, “Oh, so and so was busted today for violating the league’s drug policy.” Well, help that person. That’s what they need to do more of. So it’s definitely a culture of addiction that has swallowed up a lot of my friends. Like I said, when I was in it, I thought it was fun. I thought it was cool. I would recommend doctors that I knew who would write a lot of prescriptions. I would recommend them to all of my friends, and they would go to all of them and get the prescriptions. It was this culture of wrong-thinking. I thought it was cool to get these drugs. I thought I was cheating the system. I thought I could get real drugs under the guise of a prescription, but that I would never do real drugs. Yet there I was, basically doing heroin. It was crazy, but I was sold that bill of goods. And there’s nothing good about it. I mean, for pain it’s really helpful and a lot of people need it, but it’s just definitely overused and abused.

GALO: After your brother passed away, were you hesitant at all about moving forward with this film, especially since your family had already been through so much?

CB: I didn’t really come up with the idea for the project until I was talking to a friend of mine, Chris Masters. He actually wrestled a lot with the WWE. He got kicked out twice for failing drug tests. It started for him with a broken nose, and the next thing you know… My brother trained him and everything, and saw him take his first pill. He told him, “don’t get addicted.” But next thing you know, he’s one of the biggest addicts out there. And so, Chris Masters was really mad at the system, mad at the culture. I said to him, “I really want to make a movie about it.” And he said, “You should.” I said, “Yeah, we should call it Prescription Thugs.” We laughed about it, but the next thing you know, it was real. I hadn’t really gotten over my addiction yet, but I still wanted to make the movie because I was kind of mad at the system, too. It put me there; it put me in that position. This culture of everybody thinking that this is cool got me hooked.

GALO: In the film, Senator Ted Lieu from California was working diligently to try and prevent illegal prescription drug sales on Craigslist. Did he ever succeed in his endeavor?

CB: He contacted me one time and said that he’d spoken with someone from Craigslist, and they agreed it was no place to be selling narcotic and illicit drugs. I don’t know if they’ve actually taken it down yet. If Craigslist cuts it out, just like they did with prostitution, then people will just go to another site where they can get them. And then that site will get busted and another one will pop up in its place.

GALO: Yes, although, if they don’t do anything, the issue will be more prominent. At least by eliminating such sites, they make it more problematic for people. You can’t catch them all, but you can make it harder to sell and buy. Of course, according to your film, the government is failing to keep us safe from prescription drug abuse and Big Pharma. The statistic used in the film is that every 19 minutes someone dies of a prescription overdose. In your opinion, is there any big fix to this issue?

CB: I think that awareness of the issue can really fix it — just awareness on addiction. I think people need to know about it. We have a day for every stupid thing in this country, but we don’t have a day for addiction. Go hug an addict today, let them know you’re there to help them.

GALO: I think it’s because of the stigma surrounding it.

CB: Addiction affects everybody and if we could have a National Addiction Day or something, we could remember the people who have died, the people who lost their lives.

GALO: This is such an amazing piece to follow Bigger, Stronger, Faster*. Can you tell me anything about any upcoming projects that you are currently working on?

CB: Yeah, I’m working on a script right now for a movie that I’m calling Menace of Venice. It’s about the bodybuilding scene in the 1980s in Venice, Los Angeles where, basically from one apartment building, all of the steroids were spread across the world. I’m working on the script for a narrative film, which changes up what I’m used to doing in the documentary world. I also have an idea for a documentary called Health and Fiction, which is going to explain all of the lies in the food industry and the health and fitness industry. You look at all these terms: organic, probiotics, gluten-free, and nobody knows what they mean. That has to change, people need education. You look at something that is organic and it has 50 grams of sugar in it. How is that good for you? They’re fooling people.

GALO: Well, thank you so much for speaking with me, Chris. I really enjoyed the film. I hope that a lot of people get the opportunity to see it.

CB: Of course, no problem.

“Prescription Thugs” had its world premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival on April 18.