Heavyweight with Dave Letele brings a much-needed punch in the gut to alcohol and drug documentaries

OPINION: In the latest on what seems to be a recent stream of documentaries and shows about alcohol harm, Dave Letele – son of a gang leader, former boxer, fitness advocate, charity boss, motivational speaker and the 2022 Local Hero of the Year – tackles alcohol and drug addiction head on through the small screen.

It’s perhaps the fact that Letele is not a TV presenter – or a journalist – that makes Heavyweight such an inspiring, heartbreaking and vital watch.

He speaks not from a place of research, but from passionate, lived experience.

And while the stats everyone has heard before are there, they are not what makes the 45-minute one-off documentary the punch-in-the-gut reality check on substance abuse in Aotearoa that was needed.

It’s not police commissioner Andrew Coster admitting that 20% of police work involves alcohol as a factor that will make the more than one million Kiwis at risk of alcohol and drug harm stand up and take notice.

It’s that lived experience, and Letele’s ability to not only deliver his own expletive-laden story of survival, but his ability to truly listen as his guests tell theirs.

As someone who has seen the brutal effects of alcohol and drug addiction on loved ones (my own mother drunk herself to death years after my brother died of an accidental overdose), Heavyweight is a painfully difficult watch.

But it’s a difficult watch every Kiwi should sit through.

Letele opens the hour with an introduction to his own upbringing – as the son of a gang leader – and reaching his own point of trying to kill himself, before he later takes the couch and listens as former All Black Zac Guildford recounts his own experiences of hurt and attempted overdose.

Through the guests, and the questions he asks, Letele highlights the sheer pervasiveness of drugs and alcohol in New Zealand, which – while it can affect anyone – puts those on the poverty line, without access to employment and in Māori and Pasifika communities at higher risk.

Tania comes from a “long line of nothing”. Her mother was an addict and a solo Mum. The raw and honest way she talks about her upbringing, ease of access to alcohol and drugs, sexual abuse and her Mum’s death when she was 15 is incredibly difficult to not tear up to.

Her own journey to addiction, to losing custody of her children, getting “locked up” and being trapped in a drug addiction that she couldn’t escape become less a choice and more of a heartbreaking forgone conclusion the more she talks.

But Heavyweight is as much about shattered dreams and busted families as it is a story about hope.

Tania has managed to take steps to breaking the generational cycle of addiction, and she’s sharing, she’s teaching, and she’s helping others.

Kate, who worked in the “party” industry of advertising may not have grown up in poverty, but shares her story of losing her parents and brother and getting stuck in a cycle of drinking until the booze ran out or she passed out.

She carries a letter from her husband when she travels and might be triggered. While Erin speaks heartbreakingly openly about her son’s meth addiction and the shame and stigma that came with it, he’s come through on top.

Former All Black Zac Guildford also had “the best job in the world” but was trapped in a world of personal pain that found him caught in a cycle of drugs, alcohol and gambling. But he’s looking forward – to a future of “having control” and creating programs to help others.

Heavyweight is what alcohol and drug documentaries should aim to be. There’s something far more real, honest and hard-hitting about stories told through “f…ing” heavy personal stories that are given space and time to be told that simply can’t be achieved through statistics, and fast-moving clips.

The experts on board, from Coster to Hinemoa Elder, bring authority to the show, but it is the raw honesty, told through those that have lived through – and survived – addiction that makes Heavyweight with Dave Letele a must-watch.

It’s hard to watch without tearing up, but it’s even harder to watch without feeling a sense of anger, frustration and wondering what we can do to help break the permeating cycle of drugs and alcohol addiction in Aotearoa.

Which is exactly the point.

Heavyweight with Dave Letele is streaming now on TVNZ On Demand.