I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to watch this because it's obvious that the subject is heavy and certainly not a picnic to experience yet I was curious enough to give it a chance. It took a while before I got into it and almost gave up several times but then I slowly started to care enough to want to know more about the fate of the different characters.
Some segments are very hard to stomach mostly the drug use where we basically see everything in graphic details and the sex scenes are also difficult to sit through but I think it was a necessary evil to really depict just how things are in reality. There is nothing pretty about the heavy drug use and sexual debauchery associated with it and on this front, the documentary was efficient but uncomfortable to view.
The ending was quite satisfactory and I was able to get a sense of this universe which I would never want to experience myself yet I found the whole thing informative and in a way, essential to understand the deeply rooted issues that create the scene where some gay men can lose not only their health but their sanity. A couple of the protagonists were really whacked out and totally lost in their chemically induced state but a few succeeded in turning things around to become functioning human beings again.
Still the drug use is often very difficult to stop and as one character clearly stated, once you taste sex with those artificial enhancers, regular sex doesn't seem quite so enticing. Which is why I felt it was important for me to watch and it reinforced my belief that behind the drug abuse, there is a lot soul trying desperately to come to grips with reality and lead a satisfying life free of the drug shackle.
A 7 star rating seemed appropriate because even though this is not the best documentary I've seen on this subject and some of the segments were poorly shot or rendered, the technical flaws didn't detract from the fact that this is an important subject to portray on the screen and I for one believe that they succeeded in showing us the truth of this milieu gone wrong. Hope is still present and I enjoyed it as much as I could even though we can't qualify this as entertainment but mostly as information.