One woman's life begins to unravel. One family is pulled into the storm. And two children become caught between love, illness, addiction, and a system trying to decide what happens next.
Dissipation: A True Story of Mental Illness, Substance Abuse and a Double Injustice is an unflinching true story of a woman named Hunter and the family who desperately tries to hold on to her as her world begins to fracture.
Once vibrant, ambitious, and full of possibility, Hunter's life takes a darker turn through unstable relationships, cocaine, alcohol, reckless choices, emotional volatility, and struggles she cannot fully understand or control. What begins as escape gradually becomes a cycle of chaos-one that follows her across countries, relationships, pregnancies, and motherhood.
But nothing devastates Hunter more than losing access to her children.
As Social Services become involved and bitter custody battles move into the courtroom, Hunter becomes convinced that the people and institutions around her are working against her. Anger, desperation, accusations, and fractured relationships only deepen the crisis. Her mother, Margo, is left in an impossible position: fighting for her daughter while also trying to protect the grandchildren she loves.
When Hunter gives birth again, history seems destined to repeat itself.
What follows is a painful collision between motherhood, mental illness, substance abuse, family loyalty, the justice system, and psychiatric intervention. Behind Hunter's rage is a woman who deeply loves her children-but is drowning in something she cannot recognise, accept, or control.
Told from within the heartbreak of a family who lived it, Dissipation explores the devastating reality of mental-health stigma, addiction, family breakdown, child custody, and the difficult line between helping someone and protecting those around them.
Raw, confronting, and deeply human, this is not simply a story about illness. It is a story about the people who survive beside it-and the love that remains when almost everything else has fallen apart.
