Spurred by personal recovery, 'The Forgotten Ones' documentary spotlights opioid addiction in East African communities
A new documentary zeroes in on opioid addiction in the East African community. It's called "The Forgotton Ones: Unveiling the Opioid Effect."
Courtesy Abdirahman Warsame
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The opioid epidemic is a serious issue in Minnesota. Opioid deaths here have more than doubled since 2019.
Some communities are more impacted than others. Black Minnesotans are more than three times as likely to die from a drug overdose than white Minnesotans.
A new documentary zeroes in on opioid addiction in the East African community. It’s called “The Forgotten Ones: Unveiling the Opioid Effect.”
You can see the film at a screening this Friday at Macalester College in St. Paul.
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MPR News guest host Emily Bright talked with producer Abdirahman Warsame about the inspiration behind the film.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
EMILY BRYDEN: This is Minnesota Now on MPR News. I'm Emily Bryden for Cathy Wurzer. The opioid epidemic is a serious issue in Minnesota. Opioid deaths have more than doubled since 2019. Some communities are more impacted than others. Black Minnesotans are more than three times as likely to die from a drug overdose than white Minnesotans.
A new documentary zeros in on opioid addiction in the East African community. It's called The Forgotten Ones, Unveiling the Opioid Epidemic. Let's listen to the trailer.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- I'm confused. Do I have something to lose? Struggling to find myself. I'm tiptoeing around a fuse.
- When we get ripped out of our reality and we get constantly ripped out of our reality, that beautiful reality, the sad truth is sometimes that leads to guys and girls using drugs to help them cope with that.
- And you're doing that-- the drug and you're doing your addiction, it's like were in a car crash. But you're still in the car. And you can't really see how damaged your car is. But nobody's telling you your car is crashed, how badly it's crashed.
- Nobody wants to admit that their child was even using, less known died from an overdose. So they're going to try to cover it up.
- That's kind of how stigma continues that cycle forward. But I think the more we understand it and normalize it, the more that we can move forward in kind of fighting that and challenging that stigma.
[END PLAYBACK]
EMILY BRYDEN: You can see the film at a screening this Friday at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Abdirahman Warsame is on the line. He's one of the producers behind this film. Thank you for being here.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Hi, thank you for having me.
EMILY BRYDEN: Yes, well tell-- I'd like to hear about this film. What inspired it?
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: So my name is Abdirahman Warsame. I was born and raised here in Minnesota. But I'm from Somalia. Originally, my family's from Somalia. My mom came here in 1995. And I'm a person in long-term recovery. So I'm four years sober and counting.
EMILY BRYDEN: Congratulations.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: I'm somebody that's been personally affected by the opioid-- thank you so much. And I'm somebody that's personally affected by the opioid epidemic. I was addicted to fentanyl for some years in my adolescence. And coming out of it, one of the biggest things that I noticed was the disparity in resources within the East African community concerning the opioid epidemic and resources for addiction and recovery.
And stigma is such a big thing in our community. And so when I realized how badly it had impacted my community, I've been working on trying to destigmatize addiction, but also show people how impacted our community is. Because for a lot of people, people don't even know that the East African community is struggling with addiction, at least at the-- in the way that people-- how it really is.
EMILY BRYDEN: Yeah, I want to get into that. So talk to me about some of those unique challenges that East Africans face with opioids.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Well, there's a cultural gap in the East African community. A lot of parents here came here in the '90s after civil war in Somalia. And a lot of parents came here looking for a better life. And due to that, a lot of times, parents don't even know the drugs their kids are taking.
A lot of kids are dealing with generational trauma, coming back from their parents coming from the war. My mom came here in '95. Her father was killed in '91, dealing with that at a young age, alongside with having so many kids. Coming here, dealing with struggle, my parents divorced at a young age.
There's so many different things that parents deal with when it comes to just coming here, new country, not knowing the language, having to struggle to raise their children here and finding a way for themselves is extreme struggle for all immigrants coming to America to find a better life. And because of that, a lot of times, they come late to the party of understanding what these everyday struggles may be, whether it's mental health and addiction, what fentanyl is, what Narcan is.
And so a lot of parents don't even know what their children are facing. And when they realize it, there's the shame culture, where this is something that's new to our community. So parents don't know how to deal with it. A lot of parents, when their kids die, they try to cover it up, say that they died from a heart attack. Or they died in their sleep, or as of recent over-- during the pandemic, COVID.
And so a lot of this is because of stigma and a lack of education. And so over the past few years, we've just been trying to educate our community. But on a broader perspective, try to let people know how deeply impacted our community is.
EMILY BRYDEN: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of silence around addiction, especially opioids. There's a lot of shame, right? So how were you able to share people's stories in this film?
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Well, so I'm somebody in long-term recovery. And because of my addiction and because of the work that we do, we have a lot of connections with people. We interviewed professionals. We interviewed community leaders. We followed somebody that was struggling with addiction, an active user for an entire day with his consent, of course, to try to show people how deeply impacted our community is and really help people understand and humanize the issue at hand.
And that's the easiest way to get people to empathize is to make it personable. And so we tried our best to humanize the issue by interviewing people that are struggling, people that are in recovery, people that are trying their best to-- that are on the front lines of this issue, and all people from the East African community or that serve the East African community. To try to show people how deeply impacted the community is.
EMILY BRYDEN: And what has the feedback been like so far for this film?
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: So our testimonials have been all positive. I mean, everybody has been talking about how they didn't know how deeply deep this issue was or how personable, the person that we interviewed, Zack was. And how it could happen to anybody.
And everybody that came out of there learned something. And that was our biggest goal was to at least have somebody take away a lesson from the film. It runs for about 40 minutes. And so it's pretty much short in comparison to other films. And we wanted to do that. So that people can take away a lesson.
If we were to really dive deep into how big this epidemic is, I mean, I feel like we would have a film that probably lasts a full day because this is something that cannot be covered within 40 minutes. It's so deep. There's so many people that are affected, so many people impacted.
But we're trying. And we understand that sometimes events and just a book or something to read or listen to isn't always the best way. So this is an innovative strategy to try to impact people in a different way.
EMILY BRYDEN: Abdirahman, we're out of time for the show. But I will direct people to go see it at Macalester College on Friday. And I wish you success with your work. Thanks for talking with me today.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Thank you so much.
EMILY BRYDEN: Abdirahman Warsame is one of the producers behind the film The Forgotten Ones Unveiling the Opioid Epidemic. There's a full interview about the film on Sahan Journal's website. Go to sahanjournal.com to read it. And thanks for being with us today here on Minnesota Now. I hope you have a great afternoon.
A new documentary zeros in on opioid addiction in the East African community. It's called The Forgotten Ones, Unveiling the Opioid Epidemic. Let's listen to the trailer.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- I'm confused. Do I have something to lose? Struggling to find myself. I'm tiptoeing around a fuse.
- When we get ripped out of our reality and we get constantly ripped out of our reality, that beautiful reality, the sad truth is sometimes that leads to guys and girls using drugs to help them cope with that.
- And you're doing that-- the drug and you're doing your addiction, it's like were in a car crash. But you're still in the car. And you can't really see how damaged your car is. But nobody's telling you your car is crashed, how badly it's crashed.
- Nobody wants to admit that their child was even using, less known died from an overdose. So they're going to try to cover it up.
- That's kind of how stigma continues that cycle forward. But I think the more we understand it and normalize it, the more that we can move forward in kind of fighting that and challenging that stigma.
[END PLAYBACK]
EMILY BRYDEN: You can see the film at a screening this Friday at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Abdirahman Warsame is on the line. He's one of the producers behind this film. Thank you for being here.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Hi, thank you for having me.
EMILY BRYDEN: Yes, well tell-- I'd like to hear about this film. What inspired it?
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: So my name is Abdirahman Warsame. I was born and raised here in Minnesota. But I'm from Somalia. Originally, my family's from Somalia. My mom came here in 1995. And I'm a person in long-term recovery. So I'm four years sober and counting.
EMILY BRYDEN: Congratulations.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: I'm somebody that's been personally affected by the opioid-- thank you so much. And I'm somebody that's personally affected by the opioid epidemic. I was addicted to fentanyl for some years in my adolescence. And coming out of it, one of the biggest things that I noticed was the disparity in resources within the East African community concerning the opioid epidemic and resources for addiction and recovery.
And stigma is such a big thing in our community. And so when I realized how badly it had impacted my community, I've been working on trying to destigmatize addiction, but also show people how impacted our community is. Because for a lot of people, people don't even know that the East African community is struggling with addiction, at least at the-- in the way that people-- how it really is.
EMILY BRYDEN: Yeah, I want to get into that. So talk to me about some of those unique challenges that East Africans face with opioids.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Well, there's a cultural gap in the East African community. A lot of parents here came here in the '90s after civil war in Somalia. And a lot of parents came here looking for a better life. And due to that, a lot of times, parents don't even know the drugs their kids are taking.
A lot of kids are dealing with generational trauma, coming back from their parents coming from the war. My mom came here in '95. Her father was killed in '91, dealing with that at a young age, alongside with having so many kids. Coming here, dealing with struggle, my parents divorced at a young age.
There's so many different things that parents deal with when it comes to just coming here, new country, not knowing the language, having to struggle to raise their children here and finding a way for themselves is extreme struggle for all immigrants coming to America to find a better life. And because of that, a lot of times, they come late to the party of understanding what these everyday struggles may be, whether it's mental health and addiction, what fentanyl is, what Narcan is.
And so a lot of parents don't even know what their children are facing. And when they realize it, there's the shame culture, where this is something that's new to our community. So parents don't know how to deal with it. A lot of parents, when their kids die, they try to cover it up, say that they died from a heart attack. Or they died in their sleep, or as of recent over-- during the pandemic, COVID.
And so a lot of this is because of stigma and a lack of education. And so over the past few years, we've just been trying to educate our community. But on a broader perspective, try to let people know how deeply impacted our community is.
EMILY BRYDEN: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of silence around addiction, especially opioids. There's a lot of shame, right? So how were you able to share people's stories in this film?
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Well, so I'm somebody in long-term recovery. And because of my addiction and because of the work that we do, we have a lot of connections with people. We interviewed professionals. We interviewed community leaders. We followed somebody that was struggling with addiction, an active user for an entire day with his consent, of course, to try to show people how deeply impacted our community is and really help people understand and humanize the issue at hand.
And that's the easiest way to get people to empathize is to make it personable. And so we tried our best to humanize the issue by interviewing people that are struggling, people that are in recovery, people that are trying their best to-- that are on the front lines of this issue, and all people from the East African community or that serve the East African community. To try to show people how deeply impacted the community is.
EMILY BRYDEN: And what has the feedback been like so far for this film?
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: So our testimonials have been all positive. I mean, everybody has been talking about how they didn't know how deeply deep this issue was or how personable, the person that we interviewed, Zack was. And how it could happen to anybody.
And everybody that came out of there learned something. And that was our biggest goal was to at least have somebody take away a lesson from the film. It runs for about 40 minutes. And so it's pretty much short in comparison to other films. And we wanted to do that. So that people can take away a lesson.
If we were to really dive deep into how big this epidemic is, I mean, I feel like we would have a film that probably lasts a full day because this is something that cannot be covered within 40 minutes. It's so deep. There's so many people that are affected, so many people impacted.
But we're trying. And we understand that sometimes events and just a book or something to read or listen to isn't always the best way. So this is an innovative strategy to try to impact people in a different way.
EMILY BRYDEN: Abdirahman, we're out of time for the show. But I will direct people to go see it at Macalester College on Friday. And I wish you success with your work. Thanks for talking with me today.
ABDIRAHMAN WARSAME: Thank you so much.
EMILY BRYDEN: Abdirahman Warsame is one of the producers behind the film The Forgotten Ones Unveiling the Opioid Epidemic. There's a full interview about the film on Sahan Journal's website. Go to sahanjournal.com to read it. And thanks for being with us today here on Minnesota Now. I hope you have a great afternoon.
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