This overdose video horrified the world, but this is what happened next

This Facebook video of a couple overdosing on heroin in Memphis, Tennessee shocked the world in October 2016. But it was also a turning point for the couple involved.

Ronald and Carla Hiers were watched by 100,000 people last year while they were slumped on the street.

At the time, The Sunreported police claims and allegations that the couple had snorted heroine in a chemists, before falling to the ground in public.

Courtland Garner, the man who live streamed the couple's episode, told local news station WREG that he had no regrets about posting the film.

What they were doing was children things. It was a spectacle. It made me laugh.

When kids see that video, you know what they are going to say? I don’t want to look stupid like that, I don’t want to do those drugs.

The couple were tracked down by a documentary crew for Time and Mic. They claim they've been sober ever since that fateful day.

Carla and Ronald told the documentary crew they had both been addicted to opioids for decades.

News.Au.comquotes Ronald as saying:

Drugs and alcohol will take you to place you can’t imagine. When I got into high school, at 13 years old, I ran into a lifelong friend of mine. He’s dead now. He died in my closet from an overdose.

We began sniffing paint at 13 and smoking pot and drinking wine. By 11th grade, I got myself kicked out of school. My circle of influence was compromised to say the least.

Carla met Ronald when both were teenagers, but they did not become an item until their 30s.

Things were never normal...We were always going to jail for something. We were always strung out.

Ronald's daughter, Paris Hardee also told the documentary about her fears for Ronald's safety during his years of addiction.

You get to the point where it gets too bad to keep worrying about his livelihood or his being, because nothing you could do would help him.

It was Hardee, who, after seeing the video, called drug support charity Turning Point, to get Carla and Ronald help.

Speaking about the video, Carla said;

I could have died on the side of that road very easily, I wasn’t ready to die.

I’ve always felt like there was something better and there was.

Ronald added:

Forty-eight years of addiction, 48 years of going to jail, 48 years of watching people die, 48 years of watching people be killed or robbed, 48 years of living life in addiction prompted me to think about suicide

Carla and Ronald are no longer a couple, but they continue to talk to one another. In early 2017 Carla was diagnosed with throat cancer.

HT News Au

More: Woman shares before and after photos to show the horrific effects of heroin​