Jane Funk

Jane Funk, from the documentary film Written Off, is not only a grieving mother but also a skillful writer, speaker, and educator. Expressing her heart and experience, Jane writes directly to any reader as if he or she were sitting in her Wisconsin kitchen while looking through old photo albums. Her courageous sharing of stories and her son’s personal journal entries identify the hidden attitudes and shameful responses aimed at people suffering from addiction. Exposing a community of deeply damaged human hearts, she demonstrates that addicts are not diseased but victims— the result of our nation’s inhumanity and greed. Jane’s writings help readers to understand the addict from a human perspective and find a common ground with which to approach an addict. Jane’s role in the documentary film helps viewers to experience the profoundly personal tragedy of the addiction epidemic.

Jane also considers herself a wise fool due to her mission to take down Big Pharma. She considers what they do as legal murder. She knows her efforts are like dragon hunting with a BB gun but hopes to at least label each opioid script bottle with a skull and cross bones and arm the general public with the truth. She believes the biggest reasons we have an opiate addiction epidemic are the legality of drugs and society’s attitude toward drug use—the slight chemical difference between pharmaceutical opiates and heroin while blaming addicts for their weakness against them. She can point out the contradictions only experience can illuminate.