By Matthew Heineman
One of the biggest surprises in our newly released documentary “ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare” is the storyline about how US military medicine is trying alternative treatments like yoga, meditation, and acupuncture for managing pain and reducing injured soldiers’ reliance on addictive pharmaceutical drugs.
We follow a young combat veteran Sgt. Robert Yates, a self-professed “hillbilly” who is addicted to painkillers after being injured in Afghanistan. He undergoes an amazing transformation over the course of the film by turning to these alternative treatments. As with the rest of America, treatment of pain and PTSD in injured soldiers is based almost entirely on throwing pills at the problems, which unfortunately often leads to addiction and even deadly overdoses or suicide.
The greatest challenge for my co-director Susan Froemke and me was getting access from the US military to film this compelling story. Not surprisingly, the Department of Defense is wary of cameras and filmmakers.
