"Painkiller" - On Netflix

There was nothing inherently evil about Oxycontin. I took it for a few days following my Achilles repair surgery years ago. Did nothing for me other than blunting some of the not-so-intolerable pain, so I gave it up after a few days.

From what I have read, most of the overdose deaths and abuse came as a result of people doing things to intentionally create a more powerful high, like crushing the pill and then snorting the concentrated powder. That is where the company and many in the medical field failed to step in, because they knew that was going on from day 1.

I listen to a podcast from Wondery called American Scandal. The 5 part series, Opioids in America, was all about Oxycontin, the Sackler family and attempts to prosecute them. I have wondered how much of what was reported in the podcast was sensationalized or exaggerated. Regardless, it was a great intro into the topic.

I might have to watch to series on Netflix now to see if those facts agree with the podcast facts.

 

I haven’t watched it yet. Seems a bit cartoonish from the previews.

At the time there was a narrative in the medical community that pain was unnecessary and pain killers under prescribed. So I am sure many who worked in the industry bought into that narrative and thought they were doing good while raking it in.

 

That's one of the points the show makes about how they were so effective at selling it. Convince doctors they were helping people.

 

I've mentioned this before but before the EFORCE database was a thing, we used to stumble upon people who had long been dead from respiratory depression from oxy. It was too easy to get and addicts would take too much or combine it with other drugs or alcohol and basically go to sleep and not wake up. The effects were more subtle and a they had a longer onset. We almost never "reversed" an overdose back then because it was almost always too late.

We noticed a striking uptick in heroin and other injectable overdoses shortly after the Pill database was formed as people who were addicted still needed their fix. Sometimes a bad batch or a batch cut with fentanyl would go around and we would have a rash of overdose reversals. As many as 15 in one day between two districts that I was personally involved with.

I used to think injectables were only for true hardened addicts but I learned of a few people who made the jump from oxy to heroin after being prescribed it for pain. It was an eye opener for me and I have become much more empathetic to addicts over time.

 

You just described the “high” to a T. That “good mood” is exactly what people are chasing when they OD.

 

The similarities being the two words both contain the letters "o,", "i" and "d."