Happy Valley

That's me hanging

with my most precious gift,

my daughter, Maron.

I guess I'm a cross between

a single dad and a single mom,

and I have been

for some time now.

I'm privileged, I'm blessed,

I'm responsible, I'm happy.

God, I love her.

She's the only little girl

that I know

that, while playing dress-up,

wore my baseball cleats

as high heels.

Where's her mother?

Well, it took making this movie

to really answer that question.

I don't know,

but maybe every community,

on some level,

resembles Happy Valley.

And the prescription was for,

like, 10 of these Lortab.

So 10 pain pills.

And so I thought,

"Well, you know what?

The guy just writes it

with a pen.

We'll just get a pen,

and we'll just change

the prescription, " you know?

And he's like,

"What do you mean?

We can't write another one,"

you know?

So my buddy goes,

"Well, let's just do this."

He took out his pen, and he's

got the actual prescription.

Where it says at the bottom,

"Dispense 10,"

he takes the 10,

and he changes the 1 to a 7.

So instead of getting 10,

it was 70 Lortab... 7. 5.

And it looked horrible.

'Cause the 10 was, like,

straight up, you know?

And usually a 7

is kind of at an angle.

And so it was this... like

an upside down "L" for the 10.

I mean, it was horrible.

Anybody could...

So I'm going,

"You got to be kidding me.

We take this in,

I mean, instantly you're

gonna get caught."

He goes, "No.

This will work."

So I said, "Well, you got to be

careful where you take it."

So we literally shopped around

to find a pharmacy

where it would be the lowest

risk of getting caught.

And so we went down,

and there was a pharmacy

in Mapleton that we found.

We went in there,

and there was this lady

that was 104 if she was...

I'm not kidding.

She actually, I think, started

pharmacies in the United States.

She's the first pharmacy

in Utah.

He goes in there

with this stupid prescription.

It looked horrible.

This lady... I don't

think she could see.

She goes, "Okay, well, youse

want to wait a few minutes."

Oh, that's quite a few

pain pills."

I was out in the car

just sweating, waiting.

He was in there

for a quite a while.

I thought, "He got caught."

I'm just waiting

for something to happen.

All of a sudden I see

the front door's opened.

He comes out going, " I told you!

She's so old, she..."

And he got 70 Lor...

And that was the start of

this whole ridiculous thing.

So if you were to look

at your history...

How many drugs have you taken?

Do you know?

I've probably eaten your weight

in pain pills.

That's a lot.

Well, you're not a small man.

And I'm just gonna say,

from this standpoint,

don't be afraid to miss a meal

here and there.

But no.

And that's just a health issue

more than anything.

I mean, I remember that one time

you and I were in Vegas.

You about killed me

when I stepped in front of you

at the buffet line.

There's no need for that, Ron.

There's plenty for everybody.

That's what it is... a buffet.

I've lived here most of my life.

And there's a lot of things

I like about it.

I've traveled around quite a

bit, but I've always come back.

I feel like it's a safe place

to raise my children.

It's a close-knit community.

Our neighborhood is great.

It just has a good feel to it.

Good atmosphere.

Utah's a beautiful state.

A really nice place to come to.

As they say,

"The best snow on earth."

I'm not Mormon, but I like

the values of the LDS religion.

I like it a lot.

Mostly because of the nature,

you know?

We got the mountains 10 minutes

away, the lake 2 minutes away.

It's a good place to live.

You know, it's really clean,

really nice.

It's a whole lot different

than back home.

Well, I would say

that it goes back

to when they first came across

the Plains and got here.

They wanted to build

a utopian society,

which is

really, really wonderful,

and it's the dream of every

person on the planet to do so.

But the problem is,

is in creating the Z CMI

and doing all of that,

they were isolated from the rest

of the world for so long that,

generation after generation,

they created and defined

their own culture.

Utah definitely has

a closed mind-set.

Definitely.

Very set in their ways.

And it's this way or no way.

The alcohol laws here

are just outrageously crazy.

- They make no sense.

- How do they work?

I mean, such as, you know,

you can walk into a bar

and you can't even

buy a pitcher here anymore

unless you have more than

three people in your group.

I can drink as much...

I drink a pitcher of beer,

and to me it's like drinking

a regular beer to a small guy.

We're sheltered,

but I'm not naive enough to say

that we have no drugs,

we have no gangs,

that we don't have our issues.

We were the first black family

in our neighborhood.

And, I mean, seriously,

the kids would come over

to look at us, you know?

And the little boy

asked my little brother,

"Doesn't that wash off?"

I do think that

there's a problem with denial

with the drug use

that happens here.

I grew up here.

I've gone through

the school system.

I also teach in Las Vegas.

And I think

the big difference is

people down there

are willing to face and admit

that there's a lot of things

going on around them,

where here sometimes, I think,

people don't want to believe

that their community

could have a problem

with that kind of stuff.

And therein lies a lot of what

the problem is, in all honesty.

It comes to mind that there is

a significant problem

and that a lot of people

are pretending not to know

that there is a problem.

There's a part of me

that wants to say that

there's no way it can happen

because of our religious beliefs

and the way we raise our kids.

Yeah, there is an issue with

denial in terms of drug abuse.

And it's really hard,

especially in our culture,

especially with

our religious beliefs,

how that's looked down upon,

that kind of...

It's really hard for people,

I'm sure,

that deal

with drug-abuse issues,

because they don't know

how to overcome it,

and they don't know where to go.

They don't want to talk about it

because they feel embarrassed

or guilty.

Well, to be honest with you,

I just got released

from jail today, okay?

I was in jail

on a marijuana charge.

And that was two years ago,

and I just avoided it till now.

While I was in there,

I saw major heroin

and cocaine withdrawals

from probably 40 inmates there.

So I would definitely say

that's a major influence now.

The methadone, the heroin,

the OxyContins.

It is...

That's the thing.

It's a pill thing.

It's not your normal street.

So that's one of

the difficulties.

And I think there's a part of

Utah County that wants to say,

"No.

That doesn't exist."

The reality of it is,

it's horrible here.

Horrible.

Let's see.

This is still Christmas Day.

I had the digital camera,

so I took this picture.

Right after I took that picture,

I saw this little quirk

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