Eternal Media, Founded by Marcus Fair, who is long-term recovery from a 25-year addiction to heroin, is an exciting recovery initiative based in a 1960s nuclear bunker just outside Wrexham. Eternal’s team empower and mentor volunteer film crews, which comprise people who are rebuilding their lives and are recovering from addiction and/or an involvement in crime. Their productions encourage creativity and storytelling, enhance self-esteem and teamwork, and ensure the development of new practical skills.
Eternal Media also runs a unique therapeutic photography course, Recovery in Focus, which provides a new and creative way to tell stories of addiction and recovery, as well as three series of podcasts which I will be focusing in a forthcoming blog post. Marcus Fair was one of seven Community Game Changers named by The National Lottery as part of their 30-year celebrations. This Award was a well-deserved testament to the outstanding work done by the whole Eternal Media team.
I just love the films that are made by Eternal Media. In this post, I focus on the most viewed of their films on YouTube, Inside Spice. I include here what I have written for a book about Eternal Media that I am preparing.
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Inside Spice, an Eternal Media film series about synthetic cannabinoids, was filmed in 2018 and released on Vimeo in 2019. It was then re-released on YouTube in 2024 where it garnered large viewing numbers, 46,000 views (and 111 comments) very quickly. Lucke Gabriel, Head of Pot Production at Eternal Media, attributed this higher than average viewer rates for Eternal Media videos to the attractive thumbnail he created.
The thumbnail is the image people browsing YouTube see in the recommendations sections. It is one of the most important factors in determining whether someone views a video or not. Lucke generated a few images using Chat GPT to show a silhouetted person in prison and someone smoking spice. Next, he created the text and stylised it to make the text stand out, experimenting with different colours. He showed what he was doing to colleagues, and they agreed with him that the red and yellow colour combination in the text was the most eye-catching and legible.
Inside Spice comprises a series of five films, ranging from 8 – 13 minutes in length, although the version on YouTube is a single film comprising five main parts. The first part of the film, Totally Addicted, involves three inmates talking about the effects of Spice, how it is very addictive, and the serious adverse reactions that people experience with the drug, e.g. intense anxiety, paranoia, dissociation.
The drug is obviously getting into HMP Berwyn and impacting badly on some of the inmates. Tony’s worst experience occurred when he smoked the drug and was then not aware of anything until he woke up in hospital. Staff there were on the verge of having to resuscitate him because they thought he was having a cardiac arrest. He returned to prison, smoked Spice and went into a cold blue again, although he received help at the prison this time.
All three men interviewed wanted to stop using Spice. The Eternal Median team interviewed Tony six months later, and discovered he had stopped using Spice days after his first interview. He describes how his life had changed dramatically, in a positive way. The other two men were still using the drug.
In the second film, Spice Science, we learn a good deal about Spice from two leading experts. Dr. Oliver Sutcliffe describes Spice as a blanket name to describe a lot of different products which contain synthetic cannabinoids that act in the brain at the same sites as cannabis, but are far more powerful-acting. The synthetic cannabinoids are manufactured in a laboratory, and there are about 400 – 500 different compounds. There are huge variations in potency of the different chemicals, and a person would be unaware of what particular chemical, and its potency, they are taking…. this leads to a Russian roulette-like scenario for the user. Professor David Nutt describes the effects of Spice in the brain.
In the third film, Working With Spice, John describes being addicted to Spice for three and a half years in another prison. He reached a stage where other inmates were banging on his door, demanding the money he owed them, and threatening him. He decided he could not go on like that anymore. Soon after his decision, a letter arrived revealing that he was to be transferred to HMP Berwyn.
Whilst stopping using was very difficult, John’s desire to change was strong enough for him to leave his past drug-taking life behind him after the move. He received a lot of support, advice and encouragement, and the ways and means to engage in positive activities, at HMP Berwyn. Now, he has moved to using other forms of spice. The filmmakers show John working away happily in the kitchen, mixing spices like cumin into his food.
In Working With Spice, the filmmakers interview a number of prison staff who not only supervise the inmates and engage in various prison-related activities, but also provide support to those inmates with problems relating to their use of Spice. Staff emphasise the strict descent that occurs when inmates start using Spice, which is evidenced by negative changes in behaviour, deterioration in physical and mental health, debt issues and subsequently being bullied, loss of friends in the prison, and family relationships breaking down. HMP Berwyn staff also describe the negative impact inmates’ use of Spice has on their jobs, reducing the time they can spend with non-drug using inmates.
‘We could get to a point that we come down heavy-handed on everyone, and we say, “We drug-test everyone here. If you’ve got it in your system, this is what is going to happen. We send you back to court, you will get another six months, six months, six months.” But these people aren’t deterred by stuff like that, because they are addicted, they are in debt. It’s their way of trying to get away from some reality or something. So you can’t keep punishing people. You’ve got to get to a point where you say, “This can’t be about punishment. It’s about rehabilitation, it’s about support.”’ Nick Dann, Deputy Project Director
Nick points out that when someone comes and says they have a problem with Spice and are struggling, that’s when HMP Berywn has to provide support, whether that is through support groups involving other inmates, house care groups, involvement of substance misuse key workers, or medical interventions. Reassuring people who are doing well after coming off Spice is key, stresses another member of staff. Tony, who we discussed earlier, emphasises that staff are desperate to help people with a Spice-related problem.
In Stepping Away From Friends, Greg describes his bad behaviours when being addicted to Spice. The worst thing that happened was ‘seeing’ his Dad being kicked to death outside his prison window. He couldn’t be convinced that the event wasn’t real. He was later on suicide watch because he didn’t want to live. Marcus asked Greg, ‘What changed?’
‘Do you know what it was that made me switch? I was in Birmingham Prison, and I never thought that addicts could get clean and live a successful life, because everyone I’ve seen have either been on methadone scripts for 20 years or died. Prison, death, or sat in a council flat picking up a big bottle of methadone every day. That’s all I’ve seen in my area.
So, anyway, I attended an NA meeting. As the weeks went by, I got to know them. These are some people had been addicted for 20, 30 years on heroin, had been at rock bottom, and had turned their lives around and now they were successful people. People going into prisons and teaching people…. I know for a fact, that changed me. Because since then, I’ve just been a different person. It’s sort of given me hope.’
Greg has stayed clean since then. However, he emphasises that it is difficult giving up a drug like Spice because you often have to step away from the group of friends with whom you had been using. He’s had to go through long periods not having friends. Whilst all his mates would be smoking Spice, he would be ‘stuck’ in his cell watching a film. But he got through it, and has spent three Christmases clean.
