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Community featuresYou are in: Stoke & Staffordshire > Your Community > Community features > The life and death of a heroin addict ![]() The life and death of a heroin addictBen Rogers lived in Alton - a small Staffordshire village. He began taking drugs when he was 17 - and died aged just 34. As he began his final decline, Ben began videoing his everyday life with a Stoke-on-Trent documentary-maker. Ben Rogers - who came from from a loving middle class family - began taking drugs as a teenager, a choice that led to his death in 2007, less than twenty years later.
For much of his short life he lived in the small, picturesque village of Alton in the Staffordshire Moorlands. His family had tried everything to get him clean. He was a bright, likeable man who discovered he had a talent for film making. In 2006 he began filming his everyday life. The scenes, filmed on an ordinary video camera can be grainy and shaky, but they are painfully honest, as he trains the camera directly on himself. They contain graphic scenes of Ben preparing his fix, injecting heroin into his groin and even - in one bizarre sequence - sharing his feelings with his Sooty puppet. The silent video camera recorded it all. ![]() Darren Teale EditA little time before he died Ben gave what he had recorded to Darren Teale from Junction 15, a small independent video-arts company based at Burslem School of Art in Stoke on Trent. Darren edited more than 30 hours of footage to make a film called "Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired"… charting Ben's frustrations with his addiction. But Ben died shortly after being shown the rough edit of the film and never got to see the finished thing. He had developed a fatal deep vein thrombosis as a result of the injecting. You can see short clips from the film by clicking on the video links in the top right hand corner of this page. DVDBen's mum Anne now wants the film to serve as a legacy - she wants it to put people off drugs, and would like it shown in schools - despite some of the harrowing scenes it depicts... She gave an interview to BBC Staffordshire in which she speaks openly of the experience. To hear the full ten-minute interview, click on the audio link on the right of this page. The DVD, which is forty-five minutes long, is available from Darren Teale at Junction 15. Because of the nature of its making, the charge for it is only to cover costs and postage. Contact: info@junction15.com to find out more about availability. In 2008, the film of Ben's life 'Ben: Diary Of A Heroin Addict' was shown on Sky TV. Radio Times said the film was an "unrelentingly grim documentary which presents a horrific reality". Anne Rogers spoke to Radio Stoke about the experience of having her son's life dissected on television. Click on the links below to hear the interviews Help playing audio/video last updated: 22/12/2009 at 09:02 Have Your SayTHANKS FOR ALL YOUR COMMENTS. THIS BOARD IS NOW CLOSED.
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