Long before he became one of France's leading trail runners, Alban Berson was “the wrong kid”. A childhood of undiagnosed ADHD meant bullying he was too ashamed to report — not to his teachers, not to his friends, not to his parents — and then seventeen years in which alcohol and drugs did the work of a diagnosis nobody had made. In April 2015 he crashed. He began running again, in the valley first, then higher; that October he won his first trail race.
The diagnosis came later, in adulthood, and with it the chance to reread everything that had come before in a different light. HEAL follows Alban back to his parents' kitchen table, where things are finally said out loud, and up into the mountains where he lives simply, out of a camper van, with nature and running as his medications. Harvard psychiatrist John J. Ratey explains why it works. The film's own question is quieter: what if he stops?