Gary Mendell

The story in the curator’s words

Summer, 2011

Summer, 2011. Brian Mendell is home on a visit, sitting outside with his father, Gary. Brian has been fighting addiction since he was a teenager. “Dad,” he says, “three hundred years ago they burned women on stakes in Salem, Massachusetts, because they thought they were witches.”

Eight programs in eight years

In eight years, Brian had been through eight treatment programs. “It was impossible to know who to trust,” Gary said later. “Some programs helped Brian, and others took advantage of him.”

Brian stayed clean for thirteen months. Then, in October 2011, at twenty-five, he died by suicide. Afterward, Gary learned that much of Brian’s treatment had not been scientifically sound, and he promised to spare other families what his had been through.

Shatterproof and ATLAS

In 2013 he founded Shatterproof, a nonprofit to take on addiction. In 2020, Shatterproof and RTI International launched ATLAS: a free, confidential website that shows whether addiction treatment facilities use practices backed by research, alongside anonymous feedback from patients. It started in six states. Gary said it would give families “the transparent and trustworthy information my family never had.”

Addiction can begin in an ordinary place. For Jamie Lee Curtis, it began with a prescription after eye surgery in 1989. About ten years later, in 1999, she got sober, and she tells her story so others know they are not alone.

What Brian said

On that summer evening, Brian told his father something else. “I have a disease, and I am trying my hardest.” His father built what his family never had, for the families still trying: a way to know who to trust.