Off Label

A young vagabond couple pays for their wedding through work as professional guinea pigs. An aging African-American Muslim reconciles his memories of medical experiments conducted on him as an inmate in Philadelphia. An Army medic struggles with failed PTSD treatments. A woman mourns her son who committed suicide while taking part in an antidepressant marketing study. These are the medicated margins, those who've gone "off-label"„a term that refers to the use of pharmaceuticals in any way counter to their prescribed dosage or function. These are men and women for whom pharmaceutical use, abuse, and misuse are simply a way of life in a society that pathologizes the individual's desire for health, happiness, and even identity for profit.æ