The couple featured in a viral video showing a heroin overdose have revealed how they came to be slumped on a Memphis, Tennessee sidewalk on that infamous day.

Ronald Hiers and his wife, Carla, spoke out in a documentary produced by TIME and Mic. The couple said they had been addicted to opioids for at least 40 years before they were caught on a livestream video, sprawled unconscious on the pavement. They had just purchased some heroin and had shot up in a Walgreens bathroom.

“When I’d seen Carla, that’s when my heart poured out for her, because she was in a bad way,” Mr Hiers said of the day the video was shot. “It really hurt, because she was in public and she was being publicly humiliated.”

The video marked a turning point for the couple. After seeing the video, Mr Heirs daughter, Paris Hardee, called a rehabilitation centre and asked them to take him in. Ms Hiers, who was arrested the day the video was shot, entered treatment about a month later.

Before the intervention, Ms Hardee had cut off contact with her father.

“He was drunk and high a lot,” she said of her childhood. “He would hide needles in my drawer, in my room. “When you get those calls from jail and he’s telling me how hungry he is or whatever, I felt bad for him. I was sad and I was scared for him.”

Since her father entered treatment, however, the two talk and text regularly. Mr Hiers also talks on the phone and over social media with his wife, but they haven’t seen each since the day they entered treatment.

“I had to relearn my thinking, I had to relearn my dealings with people and to listen to people,” Ms Heirs explained.

Both husband and wife have been sober since they entered treatment.