Second Season of Surviving Addiction Docuseries Launches with Durham College Support
The second season of the Surviving Addiction docuseries, created by Chris Cull, began streaming on YouTube on July 18. According to Durham College, the season consists of six episodes, with a new episode premiering every Friday at noon. The production received funding from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Foundation and Mitacs, in addition to support from Durham College’s Social Impact Hub.
The docuseries explores various experiences related to addiction, featuring individuals in recovery, their families and friends, and health professionals. Durham College states that this season includes stories from a young man who overcame addiction as a teenager, a woman who supported her family through her partner’s struggles, and medical professionals from CAMH and Lakeridge Health.
According to the college, Sara-Ruth Allen (Social Impact Hub Project Coordinator), K. Jennifer Bedford (Faculty Project Lead), and two Durham College students—May Friedman (Photography) and Hrithik Udani (Video Production)—participated in the production. Their responsibilities included conducting and filming interviews, capturing supplementary footage, and editing the episodes, according to Durham College.
Bedford, who teaches in the Faculty of Media, Art and Design at Durham College, said, “Surviving Addiction is more than a docuseries—it’s a model for work-integrated learning in action. It gives solid footing for our students to go out into industry and succeed. It allows them to see how a real production works, not just in a classroom, but in real life.” She added that leading the project also allowed her to apply and refine the production skills she teaches to students.
Chris Cull described the series as focused on education through storytelling. “People connect emotionally with stories,” Cull said. “You can throw data on if you’re looking at overdose deaths and how many happened in the last month, and that’s a number on a screen. But if you take one of those numbers and tell the context and story behind it, then people get interested.”