Dopesick

I love it. I started watching it yesterday. I wish they would Hulu would release all the eps at once like in the olden days of streaming. My only other complaint is all the bad wigs on the male actors. Either the women don't wear them or the hair dept spent more money on them.

Well almost all the episodes are out I'm watching episode 3 now, and there are only 5, all streaming now.

r2 There are 8 eps.

Thanks, R3, well 5 are streaming right now.

It’s a great series!

What is it about Michael Keaton? I really like him! I'd see anything he was in.

Man, was Comey really that stupid? Chickens? The Sackler family was terrible. And the way they have things set up with all these groups and infiltrating hospitals, and the menace, the bullying, is scary. Why? Because you have to look at all of it, the networks, the methods and tactics, all of it, and realize that this is exactly how the people who are truly running things in the Republican Party are getting people to buy their propaganda. It is brain washing at the highest possible level. Creating the market, making Pain a thing. It is diabolical genius. and very frightening.

This has been building in the press over the last few weeks and getting more and more positive attention and now that that a few other shows I’ve been watching wrapped up I’ve begun to watch it. I just finished The Maid, so another bleak series is much, but I’ve been interested in this story from the original article in The New Yorker that became Empire of Pain, which I’ve been circling around to read, but it’s a tome. Watching the first episode, I’m a bit uneasy how stereotypical they are presenting the Sackler as Jews. I was expecting there be more discussion here, especially with the hot shirtless photos of Will Poulter. And who knew he was so tall and strapping.

The only opiod crisis is the mex cartelputting fentanol in everything. Fuck them, try being an old person who's body is fucked upand try to getrelief from doctors !!!! Youhave tojump through millions of hoops . Theytreat animals better than humans that live in agony

R8, I highly recommend reading Empire of Pain. Seemingly dense, but I devoured it over the course of 4 days. Parts of it are so salacious, the book could have been labeled fiction and I would have felt it was over the top and unbelievable. The Sackler family, Richard especially, should all be rotting in jail.

I’m looking forward to starting Dopesick - most likely next week.

Between this and "Only Murders in the Building," Hulu is really upping its game to play with the big boys.

So, a couple of things, Rosario Dawson is a revelation in this. I’ve never thought much of her as an actress, even below Rosie Perez who comes off as a caricature more then an actress. But she is hitting home run after home run in this.

I don’t understand the bit about Sarsgaard’s character protesting about language around mildly innocuous words. I thought he was teasing, but they keep playing this out and it’s become annoying without exposing what’s going on.

There have been a couple scenes, I think all supposedly at the FDA, where there are a room of people working and then the main people in conversation call for the room and dismisses the other people. I don’t get what’s going on with those situations and why they keep repeating them.

fuk....what about us old timers who need their opiates for joint pain, etc......quality of life is important ya know.

R13 I think there’s no problem under palliative care, just tell them your dying.

R9 r13 I agree. I'm tired of the media acting as if the only lives that matter in the opioid debate are 20 year old suburban druggies.

I don't get that impression at all, R15. The opioid crisis, as exploited by the heinous, murdering Sacklers (who indeed should be rotting in jail), has long been recognized as a national crisis affecting wide swaths of the United States.

I concur that Thomas Hayden Keefe's EMPIRE OF PAIN is an excellent book, brilliantly written and thoroughly researched. Everyone should read it.

Oooh, lesbians! I just started I like that quick turn of events from the kitchen table to the workplace bathroom reveal.

I like the content, but the presentation, ugh. The sweeping strings and long pauses during the Sackler family scenes; the murder mystery background music when agents are on the case, the long, contemplative framing shots. Unnecessary. I wish it were "smaller" and tighter.

[quote]I wish it were "smaller" and tighter.

That's the same thing they say about you, R18.

I remember in the late 90's when all this shit started. There was all this concern about chronic pain and how so many people are in pain all the time. Then they talked about opiods - and I was like, hold up. Opiod - as in Opium? How the fuck is this shit NOT super addictive like heroin? Oh no - trust us, it isn't.

Well, lo and behold, yes it fucking was. Earlier passing of marijuana laws would have been much more effective.

Just like the housing debacle, thousands of people should be in prison for what they did. But nothing ever happens to the big criminals.

Okay, R19, credit where it's due. That made me cackle.

I seem to recall a bunch of people shitting on Michael Keaton, saying he’s a terrible actor. It had to have been here on Datalounge. People saying Birdman was lousy, or something.

I’ve always liked him, ever since Mr. Mom, and I too would watch him in anything.

Yeah, I like Keaton. I didn't really like Birdman but it wasn't because of any acting deficiency on his part.

And now Pharma is pushing vaccines for the flu and making big money on Wall Street for Moderna and Pfizer and soon making money for insurance companies that will deny death benefits to the families of the unvaccinated deceased.

Fucking sick Oligarchs, diseased minds that can't stop monetizing everything. Killing the planet and now accelerating the death of the all us poors.

god dam fuks messin it up for folks who need painkillers.

Michael Keaton is great in this. If you haven't seen it yet, watch him in "Worth". Also very good.

Another tv show with lesbians. First episode and the lesbians are having sex🤮 As if lesbians aren't enough represented as is. ALL tv shows these days have dykes. It's like a must. Tv is overflowing with lesbians. It makes me sick. When will gay men get the same representation? Gay men on tv are neutered. Lesbians get to kiss and have sex. The double standard is sickening.

And the thing is R27, lesbians never speak out against this double standard. Drop the “LGB” — we need to go our own separate ways. Gays and lesbians have nothing in common.

One more tv show refusing to acknowledge gay guys can have masculine jobs. OF COURSE the girl in the mines had to be a fucking dyke. It makes me sick. Lesbians are constantly showed as courageous and kick-ass while gay men on tv are still stereotypes played for laughs. Not ONE fucking tv show depicts a kick ass masculine gay guy. All of them are haidressers or drag artists. Gross.

Drop the “LGB”.

LBT are against the G. I wish the LBT would fuck off, forever.

The gays who grew up in that town were smart enough to get the fuck out before they ended up becoming miners (wish we'd thought to do that).

R29 gets the prize for completely missing the point when it comes to where to focus her outrage (hint: they're the opioid producers, primarily the Sacklers).

People are really upset about the lesbian representation in this show?

Well, one person, anyway.

Asshole, yes. You can bet your ass I'm upset. Lesbians have enough representation as is today. Tv is overflowing with lesbian characters. Why couldn't they have a gay male as a miner instead? Oh wait, I forgot... gays are hairdressers and drag queens according to tv. There is no way a gay would have a masculine job like a miner. It makes me sick how once again lesbians get representation while gay men don't. I don't even want to watch this shitty series now. The fact that they added a lesbian tells me everything I needed to know about this show. It's homophobic and offensive. Yet another show that thinks gays can't have masculine jobs. I'm sick of the horrible representation gays get on tv, they're always haidressers or drag queens, stereotypes played for laugh. They're always neutered too. Gays never get a love interest, they never get to kiss or have sex, unlike the lesbians. Nothing has changed in 20 years.

^Change your tampon and go to bed.

R37 So you support offensive stereotypes, got it. Blocked.

The country is always so outraged these days. About anything and everything. I wish it would chill out already.

R29 at link.

The Mary at R29/R36 takes NOTHING away from a series about the opioid catastrophe except that they don't have any gay coal miners in the series. She throws a hissy fit and stamps her feet and blames lesbians. Even though she's dead wrong that gay characters are only stereotypes,don't tell her otherwise. R37 is right.

I'm looking forward to the last episode.

R36, I just watched an entire series called Hollywood. It was full of gay characters playing screenwriters and movie studio heads and actors. The show itself wasn't really any good but it was swimming with both gay and lesbian characters not playing stereotypes. Maybe you should watch more television.

Episode 8 is now on Hulu.

Where do you live, I’m in NYC and it’s say 12:00 AM November 17?

Sorry! It looked like a live link, but it's not.

It really peters out in the end.

I find the series very engrossing. It's also frightening how the Big Business especially Big Pharma has its tentacles in every part of government. What's outrageous is the head of FDA accepted Oxytocin as non-addictive and pushed it through, then the next year became a consultant at Purdue. The attorney general in Maine filed suit against Purdue and then they lured him with a high-paying consultant job. This is just corruption and it's still happening today which is depressing.

Michael Keaton is excellent and moving as well as Kaitlyn Dever. It was heart-breaking to watch the doctor's decline into drug addiction.

The only problem I see with the series is how they go back and forth between timelines. They jump from 1999 to 2002 and forward to 2006 and back to 1990's and it's confusing. I wonder how it would if the narrative wouldn't go back and forth and show what happened in consecutive years.

Yes, one wonders how this would play out with a much more chronological presentation, I don’t really feel they needed to do it to create drama in the story, it’s already there. Obviously there are flashbacks that they could have used instead to make some of the reveals that they do. I think it would be just as heart breaking told in a much more predictable manner.

Ok, *now* episode 8 is available!

Nice to see the real Nan Goldin and her important activism acknowledged in the midst of all the composite characters of the show.

The overreaction to the opioid "crisis" has fucked everyone. My doctor can't even prescribe Tylenol 3 anymore. He has to refer anyone with chronic pain to a pain clinic which are so busy they don't bother attempting to determine actual causes of pain, much less provide any options. Things are now far worse then they were before the Sacklers.

Yes, R52 but the medical community gets people hooked on painkillers & then torments about not being able to get their meds, justifying their pain, etc. My mom had a series of debilitating issues prior to her death & at various times towards the end, she was a raving lunatic that would've been horrified by her behavior - but her life became all about making sure she had the drugs she needed to make it day to day. She'd been made an addict by her doctors & then nursing homes, hospitals & other health care providers seem to want to punish her for being an addict. So I get your point about being difficult to get basic pain meds, but the medical community has some very contradictory practices when it comes to pain management.

"Things are now far worse then they were before the Sacklers."

R52, things are far worse than they were before the Sacklers BECAUSE of the Sacklers. They invented the opioid crisis singlehandedly with their criminal lies about oxy not being addictive and propagating that lie through their drug pushers--doctors and drug stores. Make no mistake, they ARE responsible,. Overreaction? Do you know how many hundreds of thousdands have died because of the Sacklers and their manufactured opioid crisis? I'm sorry, Mary, that you can't get your Tylenol 3, but there's a reason things are now closely monitored, and you can blame the Sacklers. Open your eyes and read the copious literature about it, starting with EMPIRE OF PAIN by Patrick Radden Keefe, before spouting your misinformed drivel.

Look, call me a conspiracy tinhat, but I don't believe the healthcare and pharma industries are in this business to actually heal people or sooth their suffering. Cheap (fast) food creates the pains and illnesses and - just like magic! - the pharma companies have some great new pill to ease people's suffering which are symptoms of the deeper issue caused by the cheap (fast) food and other unhealthy habits, nobody is interested to deal with the actual core issue, because pharma makes the most money by dealing with the symptoms only. They downright discourage anyone (doctors and patients) to dig deeper, because that is all a bunch of hokey New Age quackery.

Pharma doesn't get rich from healthy people. Pharma gets rich from people who stay sick and require constant refills of their medication.

R55, this isn't about fast food and poor diet. This is about getting people who injure themselves or who have some kind of chronic pain (everyone from high school quarterbacks to middle-aged women working on a factory line to everyone in between) addicted to a narcotic and then cleaning up on their dependence on the very drugs they're selling them and keeping them addicted through higher doses.

r56,

so in short:

[quote] Pharma doesn't get rich from healthy people. Pharma gets rich from people who stay sick and require constant refills of their medication.

R57, I don't know what you're quoting (that's not my quote, anyway) or really what your point is, but yes, the Sacklers and the opioid manufacturers exploited the very real pain of people and lied to them to get them addicted. You seem to be suggesting that people choose to "stay sick," which isn't the case. It's not about "staying sick," it's about being hooked on drugs that pharma (read the Sacklers, and others) put them on them to begin with.

R54, of course the Sacklers are responsible for the Oxy mess, however, the reactionary involvement of Congress resulting in overregulation of doctors and inability of people in pain to get even mild drugs they could before Oxy was introduced is fueling a rebound in additions and drug-seeking behaviors, as well as a significant amount of unnecessary suffering.

Just wait until you throw out your back and have to try to make do with Advil when you can't get out of bed.

^addictions, not additions

R59, what are you talking about? Where's the proof that Congress's regulation (not overregulation) of dangerous narcotics is "fueling a rebound in addictions"? I'd like to see the stats on that.

Here's an example, R61, where emergency room visits seeking pain relief have skyrocketed amount cancer patients.

R62, that's not an example of the assertion that regulation of dangerous narcotics is fueling a rebound in addictions, but yes, that's an unintended consequence of a couple decades of no regulation on the part of the FDA to curb rampant opioid abuse (in fact the FDA agreed to the lie promulgated by the Sacklers that oxycontin wasn't addictive). Again, you can blame the Sacklers for this. And of course that has to be addressed--people at the end of their lives should have whatever they need to control their pain.

But to say the current reaction to the opoiod crisis is overblown because someone can't get Tylenol 3 due to overregulation is ridiculous. People who want Tylenol 3 aren't cancer patients.

FFS, R63, it's just one example, not the entirety of the problem. If dying cancer patients can't get drugs they legitimately need, how much worse do you think it is it for people in lesser, but chronic pain? You scoff at my Tylenol 3 example, but it's happening across the board. And desperate people will turn to other sources, like heroin. The CDC link below shows there's been a 286% increase in heroin addiction since 2002. Now why might that be do you think?

Sorry, I mean increase in overdose deaths, not addictions.

LMFAO. R64 thinks if you can't score Tylenol 3, it's going to lead to heroin addiction.

There's a fucking reason regulations are the way they are now, and it's due to DECADES of doing nothing to deal with one family (with a lot of enablers) creating an addiction epidemic. Advocating for cancer patients isn't the same as what you're talking about.

All I can say is people like R66 obviously have never had to deal with the soul-destroying nature of chronic pain.

The fuck do you know what I've had to deal with, R67? Have you seen any of the hundreds of thousands of poor souls hooked at ever greater doses on oxy?

R68 watches one streaming series and is an expert on addiction.

No, R69, I've actually read 3 books on the opioid addiction crisis, which is, I suspect, 3 more than you have.

But should you want to educate yourself, R69, you can start with reading the excellent EMPIRE OF PAIN, as has been mentioned.

[quote] I don't know what you're quoting (that's not my quote, anyway)

r56, that's from the very same post,r55, you respond to. Guess you just had to reply without reading it in full.

It kind of goes without saying, R72, that pharma "gets rich" from people who depend on medications, both serious and minor medications. The idea that people "stay sick and require constant refills of their medications" could also apply to people who have heart issues, asthma, or other any of the millions of small and/or large issues people have that are controlled through medications. In other words, medications are needed to keep them healthy, even alive sometimes. Again--what's your point?

[quote] Again--what's your point?

That you're a cunt. It's ok, if you don't get it. Cunts usually don't get it that they are cunts. You're welcome.

So, R74, you have no point. And you're definitely the cunt calling a cunt a cunt. As well as an idiot. Got it.

More accolades for Empire of Pain, and for those who don’t want to tackle a big book there’s the multipart docuseries Crime of the Century that is based on it.

It's an excellent book, R76. Crime of the Century was also pretty good, for those who want to know more about the opioid crisis than the spouting no- nothings on thus thread.

Dreamland is another good book about the opioid crisis.

And there's another: Painkiller.

I enjoyed the last episode. It was good to see that Dr. Finnix had not only been able to turn his life around but to help some of the Finch Creek townspeople who had become addicted to Oxy. Michael Keaton really was great in this!

It was both funny and creepy that Billy ended up with a homelier version of his pharma bitch girlfriend. I guess he has a type? I was disappointed they didn't do more with his character. I thought maybe he would be the whistleblower that would testify. I suppose what his character managed to do was more in-line with the characterization, though.

Unlike some of the earlier posters on this thread, I wasn't that impressed with Dawson's acting. I thought it was terribly hammy at times and her relationship with the sweet chef was totally unbelievable, unless it was supposed to be a lavender marriage and I missed them both having same-sex lovers stashed away somewhere? She is a lovely lady though.

I felt that the finale was far more engrossing than some of the previous installments because they focused more on (Finnix and) Mountcastle, Ramseyer, and Brownlee.

I loved Mare Winningham in this, but I love her in anything. Also loved Michael Keaton and the woman who played Betsy, whose name escapes me at the moment.

The girl who played Betsy did an excellent job, R81.

I had no idea "Rudy Giuliani" was going to be in a few of the episodes for this show. After I saw it though, it made perfect sense that he would be involved with the Sacklers.

Thanks to OP for starting this thread. I really enjoyed this series and wouldn't have watched it without these encouraging reviews.

I've been on Percocet on many different occasions in my life. I never got addicted. Didn't even finish the pills I was given. I don't understand what the addiction is. It's not like they have a chemical like nicotine in them. They are horribly nauseating and constipating. Color me clueless.

R85, you are, indeed, clueless. Percocet contains a combination of acetaminophen and oxycodone. Oxycodone is an opioid pain medication. An opioid is a narcotic. Have you heard of opium? It's a highly addictive narcotic and has always been for as long as opium has been known to man. The Sacklers and Purdue were peddling what's considered to be a heroin pill.

Got it now?

None of it is addictive to me. I never got addicted to cigarettes either, and I smoked a fuck ton in school due to stress. After graduating, I never touched them again. So no, I DON'T get it R86.

R85, OxyContin is a time-release form of oxycodone and generally contains higher concentrations of oxycodone (Percocet). So it's even more addictive than Percocet.

Sacklers' research targeted end-stage AIDs hospice patients as examples of opioid pain relief being non-addictive.

[R85], OxyContin is a time-release form of oxycodone and generally contains higher concentrations of oxycodone (Percocet). So it's even more addictive than Percocet.

Sacklers' lied about about the length of time their product was effective as a pain reliever. Their time relief product was marketed as god for 12 hours and was only good for 8. Then they marketed their upped dosage as the solution. When consumers figured out a work around they changed their product to make that ineffective.

r64 1) Most patients dying of cancer get the pain pills or injections they want. If there are specific places where they aren't we should all be outraged. But its so isolated its not worth factoring in.

2) You can't talk about opiates and oxycontin as if they're part of the same problem. Since 1912, opiates were mostly illegal because they destroy the brain in a very specific way. Most whose brain receptors are damaged like that continue to escalate their abuse. so of course they will turn to heroin.

My point: You seem to think the heroin epidemic is partially fueled by people who are in pain and can't get appropriate pills through normal channels. In modern day America, show me a heroin addict and they probably got addicted to pills (which were far more common for a decade than heroin). But not just any pills. Oxycontin because the Sackler family created an illusion that Oxycontin was non addictive and gamed the system (and actively lied) in a way that purposely created a blockbuster drug. But unlike blockbuster drugs of the past, this one kills a good percentage of people who take it regularly and up their doses. Which is EXACTLY WHAT THIS COMPANY ILLEGALLY PUSHED DOCTORS AND PATIENTS TO DO. It was systematic. They pushed a narrative "Give the patient more, have them take it more often, and then DOUBLE their dose if the pain comes back" which always happens in cases of chronic pain. Pretty much Anyone who does this will become addicted.

A drug like Oxycontin can only mask pain for a few weeks. So anyone in chronic pain is not going to benefit from it because the chronic pain will come back next month. Specific acute pain is ok.

The guy who played the main Sackler character is a really bad actor. Not sure what he was going for with the pauses and wheezing his lines out.

The opioid “epidemic” is a non crisis that doesn’t matter in the broad perspective of healthcare. Barely 50-60,000 people die of drug overdoses a year. 70% of those are because of synthetic opioids, and since around 2016, it’s mostly FENTANYL, not Oxy. Fentanyl gets into this country from China through Mexico.

The epidemic in this country is chronic pain. 1 in 3 people experience pain of some sort in this country daily. That’s 100 million people. 100 MILLION. Compare that to the statistically insignificant 50,000 drug overdosers.

The endless DEA drug war is absurd. Yes, the Sackler’s lied and should be punished severely, but trying to say this is a massive crisis that is on a scale that anyone should care care about or that should get this kind of attention is ridiculous. It is something the media and government uses for attention and clickbait to distract you from what really is going on, and it denies TENS OF MILLIONS of people in pain what they need to survive.

I couldn’t give a fuck about the opioid “crisis.” It’s NOT a crisis and it’s a media fueled lie and waste of time.

R92 Michael Stuhlbarg is actually a highly acclaimed actor of stage and screen, in 2017 he was in three Academy Award best nominated films playing radically different nuanced characters. Really his scene with Timmy in CMBYN as the dad consoling him after his return from being with Oliver is a masterclass in acting unto itself.

He was a great choice in playing a difficult, difficult character that the audience will have no inroads of empathy for and see as pure evil. I’m sure many actors did not want to play this utterly unsympathetic person. What’s great for him is that he embodies characters so deeply you many times don’t recognize him from role to role and he can slip away from a part like this better then most actors.

That all said, it was an uncomfortable performance. It’s no denying the Sacklers are Jewish, but this tipped into the “evil Jews” trope a bit hard for me. Then there’s the overlay of Autistic behavior as another means to convey and maybe justify his actions, the disconnect of him not having any empathy towards others and a single minded calculating mind set on a path without any wavering. These two combined, no matter the kernel of truth, don’t bode well for character development without falling into a negative stereotype performance even by the best actor.

The Oedipal urge to prove himself to his elders is less problematic and was a much easier inroad for most in the audience to grasp as a motivation. So a very thankless role, and maybe not the best written and directed choices, but he did a very captivating performance with what he had and I suspect better then many other actors who may have taken it on. But we were never going to like or understand him.

Michael Keaton’s performance really grew on me — he was pretty extraordinary in this. Hope he gets an Emmy.

Everything R93 says is a fucking lie. Hundreds of thousand have people have died from the very real opioid epidemic. It's of course a crisis when it sweeps through whole swaths of the American population, and everyone knows that. It's hilarious--R93 takes a page from the playbook that the problem is "chronic pain"--EXACTLY what the Sacklers sad. Do we have a Sackler here on DL or a former Purdue apologist?

Go fuck yourself, you lying cunt. Your bullshit won't sell here.

*EXACTLY what the Sacklers said.

Those numbers are actual and real, dear. Look them up. There was an uptick in numbers of dead this year because of the pandemic. Around 100k, announced yesterday. Most likely an outlier because of the pandemic. At its peak, opioid deaths are at the most around 50-60,000 per year. Barely a blip. And like I said, most now are because of fentanyl, not oxy.

All of these statistics are real. Google it, honey. I’m not going to argue with people that deny facts like Trumpies, who I’ll note LOVED to drum up this particular issue because it distracts from real fucking problems.

The real epidemic in this country, in this WORLD, is chronic pain that is not being dealt with, and that now doctors are terrified to deal with because of the hysteria emanating from nuts like R96 who don’t have a single clue about what’s going on other than what’s fed to them by the agenda driven DEA and media.

And I’ll add, the “war” on drugs was never a real thing and it will never be a real thing.

Two above are R93.

There is also the very real studies that showed 90%+ of people prescribed opioids don’t get addicted and take only what is dictated by their doctor. The problem is low-tier doctors in Appalachia who over prescribed in West Virginia and Ohio - admittedly pushed with marketing by Purdue.

This is a seesaw. The late 70s and 80s saw doctors drastically cut pain management prescriptions. OxyContin marketing played on this UNDER prescribing and anti-drug crusade that prevented doctors from helping patients who they saw suffering. By the late 90s, doctors who had not seen the harm from the 60s and early 70s over prescribing problem we’re open to more aggressive pain management.

Now we are back on the “all pain management is bad” bandwagon. Like all things in the US, we can’t find a happy middle ground of moderation, logic and non-political, non-legal common sense.

Yeah, the liar at R93/R98/R99 is working overtime selling her bill of bullshit. The very real stats from the CDC. 841,000 deaths since 1999.

[quote]I seem to recall a bunch of people shitting on Michael Keaton

Pics please.

Uh R102, you do realize that you’re proving my point, you dipshit? 841,000 deaths over the span of 22 fucking years is ACTUALLY LESS than what I said happened PER YEAR. It’s not even 40,000 deaths per year. Again, barely a statistical blip in the population.

As I said in my OP, the Sacklers are drug pushers. They are fucking evil. They should absolutely be punished. They should be stripped of all their privilege and left penniless. Btw, that won’t actually happen. Ever. The rich are never really punished.

But I say again, opioids are not the fucking problem, the opioid and drug “crisis” is bullshit, and is used as a media and political beaten dead horse that functions as clickbait to get hysterical reactions from people like you and you’re fake concern. Opioids are one of the only approaches to chronic pain that actually work, and even they don’t work for anyone.

So fuck off. You’re the liar.

Anyone = everyone

R104 speaks much truth.

Enough of you, you lying gash, R104. Everyone here knws you're a liar who has NO POINT to prove and pretends all those hundreds of thousands of death--close to a million, in fact--are meaningless. A million dead is a "blip"? Bye, gash. Block this troll, folks.

R106--another liar.

Yes R101, you’re exactly right, pain management is definitely a seesaw in this Puritanical country, and we’re on the low end of it right now because of the hysteria seen above.

Considering that the Sacklers handpicked their judge by filing bankruptcy in White Plains rather than NYC, they're on track to completely get away with hundreds of thousands of deaths with no concession of guilt, but of course their hallowed reputation as philanthropists (which they seemed to care so much about) is now covered in shit, and their name and their money are finally persona non grata.

It's also good to see a swipe taken at the oldest Sackler, Arthur, who made HIS fortune off pedaling valium in the 1950s and 1960s. His cunt daughter Elizabeth and that branch of the ratbag family love to say how they had nothing to do with Oxy, since they were bought out of the family drug trade before that epidemic kicked in, but the truth is they made their money preying off housewives and others for decades with "mother's little helper." When the series refers to Purdue (ie, the Sacklers) as a "cartel," it couldn't be more accurate.

Former New York Times journalist Barry Meier wrote in his book Pain Killer that Arthur Sackler "helped pioneer some of the most controversial and troubling practices in medicine: the showering of favors on doctors, the lavish spending on consultants and experts ready to back a drugmaker’s claims, the funding of supposedly independent commercial interest groups, the creation of publications to serve as industry mouthpieces, and the outright exploitation of scientific research for marketing purposes." Psychiatrist Allen Frances told The New Yorker in 2017 that “most of the questionable practices that propelled the pharmaceutical industry into the scourge it is today can be attributed to Arthur Sackler.”

To get back to the show, this was the first performance of Peter Sarsgaard's that I've seen. What are some other things he's good in that I should watch?

He's lousy on stage, that I can tell you.

Noted, R114. I appreciate it.

What I found appalling was the blatant, in you face co opting of the FDA officials, DEA, Justice, and other federal and state regulatory and investigative agencies, and the revolving door of people leaving government to go work for Sackler. Then there was the Sackler misinformation strategy that they simply didn't give a fuck about. The lies, falsifying information, intimidating Doctors, hospitals, their own sales staff, etc. They operated like an organized crime organization and the hammer of financial ruin and professional destruction was very real. They made no idle threats. It was very upsetting. Especially because it is evident those tactics have now been applied with a great deal of success to our politics. It was the ugliest most outrageous part of the story IMO. Yes, the deaths and the addiction and the fact they didn't give a fuck, and kept selling and kept pushing higher doses, was scary. But the fact that these tactics are so universally applied is something we have not yet addressed.

And this scumbag family is STILL doing it and getting away with it, R116. That's why I appreciate all these books and miniseries that are now putting a great big spotlight on this criminal (literally criminal) family and showing how singlehandedly responsible they are for the opioid epidemic that sweeped through the country for decades, and continues to this day to be a scourge.

I’m watching the series and it’s top-notch.

R113 He plays one of Alfred Kinsey’s research assistants in Kinsey and gets naked and has sex with Liam Neeson and it’s a quite good performance too.

[quote] Another tv show with lesbians. First episode and the lesbians are having sex🤮 As if lesbians aren't enough represented as is. ALL tv shows these days have dykes. It's like a must. Tv is overflowing with lesbians. It makes me sick. When will gay men get the same representation? Gay men on tv are neutered. Lesbians get to kiss and have sex. The double standard is sickening.

My gods, you’re a fucking idiot.

I just watched the first episode. The conversation between the lesbian and her doctor was about her need to keep working so she could ESCAPE!!!!!

That was one of the most compassionate, empathetic portrayals of the plight of gay and lesbian people that I’ve EVER seen anywhere. She couldn’t even get out the word: ‘gay,’ so he relieved her of the need, assuring her that he understood. This after telling her girlfriend that she was NEVER leaving. She’d obviously had time to think about it, and realize she’d never be able to live her own life UNLESS she left. It was the same, sad realization that generations of lesbians and GAYS have come to.

How often do straight people actually THINK about what the lives of gays and lesbians are like? I’ll bet more than a few got a revelation from that scene, yet all you care about is soft porn?

Stupid fuck!

Thanks R119, I'll check it out.

40,000 people die car crashes every year. Is that an “epidemic” worthy of constant media attention and Presidential decrees and a group solely dedicated to stopping it? Well, it should, right? It should be worthy of all the hysteria posted here and in the media, right? So, where’s that same energy?

The actress playing the young lesbian is pretty good as well, maybe a little one-note but she doesn't have much of an arc. Has anyone seen her in anything else?

Oh yes R123. Watch “Unbelievable”. Such a great mini series and Kaitlyn Dever is a stand out. It’s a real terrific show. On Netfix.

I just start watching this. Why are all the women's wigs so awful?

R122, You were asking...

‘A staggering increase’: Yearly drug overdose deaths top 100,000 for first time

I still don't understand the point of making a commercial about the medicine but not allowing the patients in the ad to name the specific medicine.

Thanks, R124.

Silence from the big-mouth asshole at R122 after R126's link.

[quote] I've been on Percocet on many different occasions in my life. I never got addicted. Didn't even finish the pills I was given. I don't understand what the addiction is. It's not like they have a chemical like nicotine in them. They are horribly nauseating and constipating. Color me clueless

[quote] None of it is addictive to me. I never got addicted to cigarettes either, and I smoked a fuck ton in school due to stress. After graduating, I never touched them again. So no, I DON'T get it [R86].

Lucky you. Everyone is a little bit different in how we’re affected by drugs, due to biochemistry and, I believe, personality.

I’ve smoked week, snorted coke and ketamine, and done crystal meth, and my reaction to each was a big ‘meh!’ (in the case of meth, the high was nothing special, but the crash was HORRIFIC!), but give me some MDMA and I’m off to the races, and i never want to come down.

I watched crystal meth destroy the lives of many, many people in NYC during the ‘00s, but some could handle it just fine. Everyone is different. If addiction doesn’t touch you, that’s great...for YOU. Understand that its a different story for others and count those lucky stars.

I’ll add: my mother smoked for DECADES, Camels, unfiltered Her husband got sick when she was in her seventies and she couldn’t smoke in the hospital, so…she stopped; no fuss, no drama. Last year she celebrated her ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY!

Everyone is different.

r92 He is doing an impression/performance of Richard Sackler. Probably an amazing one. I think he was a well respected theater actor before the Coen Bros casted him as the lead in A SERIOUS MAN. Within 2 years he was cast in Spielberg and Scorsese movies.

Michael Stuhlbarg is an excellent actor, yes, R131.

Stuhlbarg was awful in that Showtime series where he plays a crime boss. The character was all over the place. He's supposed to be a boss but lets his wife step all over him, allows the judge too many chances, and generally just bumbles everything. Not believable as a mafia-type.

I didn't see that, R133, but in everything I see him he's in, he's pretty good, and that includes this.

Richard Sackler was autistic with a weird old-man voice?

R135, why don't you find out, do a little search of the actual person and compare? Generally, well-trained, intuitive, intelligent actors like Stuhlbarg actually do make the effort to study the person if they're playing someone from real life. Especially if they're deliberately evocative or unusual choices.

For sure.

So, does that answer your question, R135?

And the asshole opioid-crisis denier at R122 continues to be quiet after R126.

Carry on...yes, Stuhlbarg really captures the miserable, contemptible aspects of the real-life vermin Sackler.

[quote]I 've been on Percocet on many different occasions in my life. I never got addicted. Didn't even finish the pills I was given. I don't understand what the addiction is.

We are all potential addicts. Most of us haven't been exposed to opioids so will never know. Most who have been exposed to opioids dont get hooked on them. There is a small subset of those who are exposed to opioids who have the biology that make them crave opioids constantly. An estimated 50% of addicts started because of a prescription from a doctor.

People start with pills and then move on to heroin because it's easier to find and cheaper.

Richard Sackler is pure evil. Fuck this guy hard. He should have been made to take his own product until hooked.

What does Oxycontin feel like? Would it take my toothache pain away?

The Sacklers, all of them--Richard, Kathe the cunt-dyke, David--are evil. Sociopathic, endlessly greedy, utterly incapable of feeling any empathy, and with a bottomless sense of superiority with contempt for the poor. I hope they die painfully.

[quote] I remember in the late 90's when all this shit started. There was all this concern about chronic pain and how so many people are in pain all the time

They were. My father was a terminal lung cancer patient. His oncologist gave him an Rx for Percocet as needed. His onc was in NYC, he was on LI. He ran out when his dr was on vacation and asked his family dr to renew the Rx. Family dr refused until I called and read him the riot act as an NP, telling him to give my father a fucking RX for 8 pills to get him through to the day his onc came back from vacation. Shortly afterwards, his onc was arrested in by the FBI and marched out of the office in handcuffs for writing too many Percocet RXs.

He was a FUCKING TERMINAL LUNG CANCER SPECIALIST. TERMINAL. END OF LIFE CARE. In a metropolitan area of 12 million people, getting referrals from hundreds of doctors.

It made headlines and oncologists started calling the FBI to turn themselves in. (It was the 1990s when you could still do things like that as a protest & not get thrown in jail). The oncologist was let go by the fbi because guess what... he did nothing wrong. The NYC FBI flagged him because of prescription data thaf they didn’t bother to interpret. Interpret data = if someone is an OB GYN in Podunk or a suburban psychiatrist generating lots of narcotic prescriptions, that’s suspicious. If someone is a specialist in terminal cancer at a renowned university hospital in the most densely populated metropolitan area in the United States you might not want to break out the handcuffs before doing some further investigating. But then, this was the NYC FBI... the same people who missed 9/11, let Rudolph Giuliani put the NYC Office of Emergency Management in WTC, and who “forced” Comey to release a memo about Hillary emails right before the 2016 election.

This was going on all over the country. Oncologists were being questioned or arrested by the FBI for giving pain medication to dying people. Doctors who saw disability patients were being lumped in with Medicaid fraudsters.

Pain was real. Pain medication was constantly withheld from patients in pain. If the Sacklers took advantage of that, fuck them. But make no mistake — chronic/terminal pain management was a BIG issue in the 1990s in all medical & nursing journals

The Sacklers and Purdue unleashed their heroin pill among the medical establishment, they sent out sales reps like an army to sell sell sell, they bought federal reps, they had the FDA say it was addictive in 99% of the population (completely a lie), and they proceeded to turn whole swaths of the country into drug addicts. That's what happened. And they reaped billions. They created pain beyond what they were treating, and they murdered hundreds of thousands.

* FDA say it wasn't addictive in 99%

R144 is exactly the reason OxyContin started. Doctors and nurses saw people were being UNDERtreated for pain. We need to stop the hysteria around all pain management. Focus on fentanyl, heroin, meth - but it is dangerous and cruel to deny pain medication to those in need. Arresting doctors is not the answer, stopping the fentanyl supply is a big part of the answer.

There's a difference between denying pain medication to people in need and looking the ther way as addicts move on to fentanyl, which is what they do, and will kill them eventually, anyway. There's no hysteria in recognizing that. And trhe rampant arrewst of doctors is not what's happening now, so lert's cut the bullshit.

There's a difference between denying pain medication to people in need and looking the other way as addicts move on to fentanyl, which is what they do, and will kill them eventually, anyway. There's no hysteria in recognizing that. And the rampant arrest of doctors is not what's happening now, so let's cut the bullshit.

Typos fixed.

I have to say aside from the weird denier on this thread, I’m very impressed how DLers responded to this limited series and The Maid and had real heartfelt comments and compassion for people in those situations. It’s not a side of DL that comes out so often.

R140 Also, the "I didn't get addicted to Percoset" guy probably took a relatively constant dose. DOPESICK shows how it pushed their sales reps to convince doctors to start patients on higher doses of Oxycontin, then as soon as their pain came back, to double the dose. And then they kept rolling out new higher dosages. They started with 10mg pills, then introduced 20's, 40's, 80's, and finally, they had to change the shape of the 160mg so they could fit the number on it.

And for anyone who thinks the actual number of deaths is inconsequential, remember for every death (and they are grossly, vastly undercounted for reasons explained in Dopesick) there are 10 or more hopeless addicts whose families are destroyed, not to mention the dozens of crime victims that each addict eventually ends up perpetrating against

Yes doctors were scared of prescribing pain pills because they would be flagged by the FBI as drug pushers. So chronic pain was vastly under treated

Purdue was able to change that mindset but created a ton of addicts in the meantime.

I got Percocet after my wisdom teeth extraction. While it stopped the pain, it also made me extraordinarily loopy and ultimately gave me projectie vomiting—my stomach clamped and I literally vomited across the room!!

Thankfully I had that reaction so I know I can’t have opioids

There have been drug addicts in ghettos and rural areas for forever. We just jailed them unfortunately.

America only started caring because addiction hit middle class white families when their kids got oxy after an sports injury or operation.

Suddenly America started to treat addiction like a disease instead of a legal problem

Despite the overdoses by regular people, seems like everything took a muchsharper turn when celebrities started dying of overdoses. I work in the health field and when Heath Ledger died in 2008 and they found all those prescription pills at his bedside, that's when the government and medical community started to really pay attention. I don't remember any patients I worked with being on oxytocin but they had to be in extreme pain like severe spinal problems. Of course, terminal patients would get their opioids like morphine, some were on Fentynal patches.

I would triage calls from patients with ridiculous reasons why they needed a refill on their opioids, especially Vicodin. Some would say their dog accidentally got in their purses and ran off with it, their sister-in-law stole it or "I was out in a boat and I looked down and my bottle with Vicodin tablets fell in the lake." The craziest one was a guy who asked for a refill so he can pay the local drug pusher because the guy loaned him some pills. Back then, people usually got their pills if they cried loud enough.

In 2016 when Prince died of an overdose and they found he was addicted to prescription pain pills, that's when the Federal government immediately cracked down on the doctors and prescribing opioids. People were used to getting Vicodin for chronic back pain or arthritic pain and now they were limited to 30 day supply not 90 supply like before and required to take a lab test every now and then. We had patients screaming on the phone and crying. I was on xanax for anxiety, even that was curtailed for me. But after so many years, patients have accepted it.

No silence R129, I mentioned those statistics earlier, you dumb cunt. There was an obvious rise because of the pandemic. Still, a blip. Not worth the absurd attention it receives. Drug addiction and the attendant political bullshit continues to be nothing but a time waster.

.017 percent of the population is not worth this kind of attention. Period. And you know it.

R113 - Peter Sarsgaard has fast become my favorite actor. He was fabulous in Shattered Glass, Orphan, The Lie, The Skeleton Key, and The Looming Towers. And I’ll second the recommendation to see Kaitlyn Dever (Betsy) in Unbelievable.

Watching now. Love it so much.

I’m crushing on Jake McDornan who played the young handsome US attorney.

Yes, because the so-called "opiod crisis" was all the fault of evil corporations who forced people to become addicts.

Funny how the poor white folks aren't at fault for their addictions and drug abuse, but when actual law enforcement and the CIA were involved in building and protecting the drug trade for crack - that was all the fault of drug addicts, you know, who just happened to be black.

R159 Oh yes, his alpha daddy District Attorney caught my eye the first time he entered the room. Men who command that instant attention fascinate me. I didn’t recognize him at first, but of course he’s been in tons of things and I did know who he was once I looked. I wonder why he’s never really broken out and sustained a higher level career and notoriety?

so-called "opiod crisis"

Fuck outta here, R160, you cunt Sackler defender. In fact, if you knew anything about this story, which you clearly don't know or care, you would know that Sackler was the proponent of "hammering the abusers" (his phrase) which meant going after anyone they got addicted, all so they could see to the people who were filling their prescriptions and getting hooked through their doctors, who upped their doses--that was considered okay because they weren't ending up dead on the street, which made Sackler andf Purdue look bad. It was optics.

And yes, the crack epidemic was ignored because it affected huge sections of black people--that was another, equally disgusting issue--blacks being treated like criminals for their addiction. But so were poorer whites treated like criminals--by the actual criminals who made the drugs.

I felt similarly to R160 until I started watching this show. Purdue’s calculated deception about the addictive nature of Oxy and how they kept raising the dosage per pill is so fucked up. The way the show is weaving that part with its impact on the small town doctor and his patients is very effective.

Similar to a cartel honestly. Extremely disturbing.

R159, yes his face is beautiful

R163, the Sacklers and Purdue were and are EXACTLY a drug cartel--a legal one, enabled by the FDA. But they were and are lethal drug pushers, absolutely.

Why is everyone's wig so terrible in that show? Did they go really cheap on costumes?

R153 The hideous nausea deters me from taking it. I'd rather be in stabbing pain than to vomit my guts out. Addicts are weak minded idiots.

Michael Keaton better get a long-deserved award for Dopesick. The series is an amazing historical eye-opener no matter what side of the “pain pill” fence you are currently on.

I’ve read the story in multiple books - Dreamland being the best. Then I had a severe back sprain/spasms for almost 3 months and could not get any relief. They only give NSAIDS now - which are comically useless. Bring back Vicodin at least and give those in excruciating pain hope.

Raul Esparza has gotten so fat!

Pharma Reps are this aggressive with all their drugs.

This is why many hospitals and medical settings have banned them

I find it redundant. Rehash. This topic has been dramatized repeatedly. Seems like there have been dozens of story arcs and hundreds of podcasts. Its a tragic story and a hideous story of capitalism, and I don't need to hear it again.

The Sacklers, Who Made Billions From OxyContin, Win Immunity From Opioid Lawsuits

NPR link that DL won’t take

OxyContin is still on the market, right?

Is your TV locked to Hulu, R172?

[quote] Michael Keaton better get a long-deserved award for Dopesick.

It literally broke my heart watching him fall into addiction but his saving grace was in helping others.

This series would have been perfect if it didn't keep switching between timelines.

r156 Love your attitude, but:

about 1 million Americans used Heroin in 2016. I've read that there are an estimated 500k daily users of heroin. Cant source that right now.

In 2016, there were 214 MILLION opioid prescriptions written in America. That dropped to 150 million in 2019. Guessing based on those actual numbers that people in pain are getting their opioids.

The United States is 4% of the world's population and is now using 80% of world's the opioid pills.

It’s still happening in red states. Alabama, Mississippi, even West Virginia still have doctors prescribing. In the Northeast and CA opioids have basically been banned. It seems to be a state issue of over- and under-reaction.

Yes, record numbers of prime are dying from OD and 50% got addicted originally because of an opioid prescription

R177, thanks for attempting to educate the Sackler loving opioid-denying gash at R156. She's not impressed with hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Actually, R172, this topic hasn't been dramatized repeatedly.

R167 seems to think because she has an adverse reaction to potentially addictive pain medication, anyone who doesn't but could get turned onto something that is known to be addictive is a "weak-minded idiot." Talk about an idiot.

Enjoyed the show, but that last episode just ended like a damp squib. Some of the chopping and changing of the timeline was useful for the storytelling, but they went overboard with it. A shame, as the cast were fantastic.

Time and again Republican politicians and lawmakers fuck over poor, red states for their own financial gain, and poor red states keep voting for them. Has there ever been a crisis in the US that hasn’t been caused by Republicans?

r101 the studies were done on hospice patients. The reason they did not get addicted was because they died.

The opioid crises has decimated parts of our country. I also believe this has had an effect on people's distrust of vaccines, they saw what happened when the medical community promised with painkillers.

r172 thinks the issue of addiction has been covered in films. Most Addictions have a lot in common. It's physical, emotional, and spiritual. Environmental and genetic factors play a part. Most detoxes can occur within a few days to a few weeks.

Opiate addiction is a totally different animal. Virtually all who are provided with escalating doses will have their brains permanently rewired. Their lives are over. For most, there's no coming back. Americans knew this when they pretty much banned opiates in the 1910s except for limited controlled prescriptions. What the Sackler's did here in terms of overturning that ban and pumping hundreds of millions of doses into the American public has never been covered before.

While some people may not get addicted at low doses, it’s harder when drug companies are pumping out the high doses that Purdue was and telling doctors to prescribe what they feel is necessary for the pain.

Their big win was for general practice doctors to prescribe it like water instead of restricting it to pain docs.

Pharma drugs reps are trained to just as calculating as those portrayed in this show.

Pharma hires great looking drug reps to be able to get into any door with their looks and charm and “befriend” the docs and staff.

I sat in my doctor’s office once listening to this pretty drug rep talking - well, flirting - with him in the next room. She went on for about a half hour giving her spiel, giggling like an idiot schoolgirl, and totally oblivious to the fact that she was holding up my appointment. Not that my doc was innocent, but that opened my eyes to what drug reps are.

Drugs reps used to be able to offer meals and trips—basically bribes—to get docs to prescribe. And studies show that meeting with drug reps and getting even a meal out of it increases prescribing of the drug talked about.

Now, it’s the law that drug companies have to report how much is spent on each doc and it’s viable on a public website. That’s cut this stuff down considerably.

I’m rewatching Dopesick. Upon second viewing, the timeline back-and-forths actually make the story more compelling. What an incredible series.

I kept forgetting to note the timeline dates, R191, though I think on a second viewing, I'd be more apt to take note.

Even taking a pen impacts prescribing.

I have a reaction like R153 to opiates except they really don’t impact my pain the way they do other people, it’s lessened (probably because I am distracted by the loopiness and weird itchiness), but far from gone. Anyway sucks to be me after a bowel resection.

But most days I thank my lucky stars that opioid addiction is one thing I don’t have to worry about.

The idea that the only measure of opioid’s destructiveness is deaths is ludicrous. I see how it has destroyed lives in my own family. Prison, losing children to foster, I wouldn’t trade my years of untreated chronic pain from Crohn’s to what they’ve gone through.

And hey OxyContin meant there was no point in researching non-opiate painkillers for two decades, leaving people like me with no options but Tylenol for acute post-surgical pain.

And what’s up with the whole “wonder drug because it allows people to continue to work at physically demanding jobs while seriously injured sales pitch?” What a failure of our labor laws and common decency.

We’ve just started watching the show and wow agree with the other posters about Michael Keaton.

I think the show could have been done in 6 episodes. It started to drag after episode 4 and by the end I was honestly rolling my eyes.

Keaton was great throughout and Dever was great and my god that US Attorney actor was hot. But it just got so repetitive and the jumping around time frames started to get annoying.

Worth watching but very uneven.

r193

♫ We love you elderlez Oh yes we do We love you elderlez Oh yes we do When you're in pain It pains us, too Oh elderlez, we love you.

[quote] my god that US Attorney actor was hot

Jake McDornan

I first saw him when he played Murphy Brown's son in the revival of Murphy Brown. He's stunning

God he was so hot.

Here's a pic of him when on the Murphy Brown reboot.

See Limitless, the show Jake McDorman starred in, on paramountplus.com

slurp

lol my takeaway from dopesick was the hot actor who played the US attorney from virginia.

R201, have you missed the last 5 posts?

yes R202 - based on those beautiful posts, I was summarizing my takeaway.

Mare Winningham is looking rough.

You are so sweet R195. Thank goodness I’m in remission at the moment.

Things have changed so dramatically in regards to the culture of accepting bribes errrr gifts from pharma reps. I can’t tell you how much Hoffman LaRoche pizza I ate in the 90s when I was working on the “doing” side of research. And I thought nothing of it at the time, but I hang my head in shame now. Senator Grassley is pretty awful on many levels, but the Sunshine Act is a great piece of legislation.

I can’t stop thinking about that moment at the weekend conference where Michael Keaton’s character speaks on the stage.He turns himself into his own most powerful drug rep through the power of the narrative he creates. It’s a brilliant moment.

R204 seeing Mare Winningham like that makes me feel soooo old.

Winningham always plays the same type of role nowadays but she’s excellent whenever she does it

I just saw Glynnis O'Connor

I'm crying as I type this

[Quote] can’t tell you how much Hoffman LaRoche pizza I ate in the 90s when I was working on the “doing” side of research.

Funny how drug reps could get away with just paying for pizza for a doctor’s office staff. Just put one person on a chronic drug and the company makes thousands.

I've never cared much for Michael Keaton or Rosario Dawson but they were both excellent in this.

The bald patch wig on the one Sackler brother took me out of it.

The actress who played Betsy did a good job but I didn't understand why she was still have the sweats years later.

R211, all the women also have TERRIBLE wigs--the Sackler sister, Rosario Dawson, Phillipa Soo, the Southern lady who was dating the doctor

Peter Skarsgard has an obvious wig

It's like they just taped on the wigs--and you can see the tape!

[quote]all the women also have TERRIBLE wigs-

Have you ever been to rural western Virginia?

Can you Marys get past the fucking wigs?

Rosario Dawson was great.

Can you people see that there are two sides to this?

I want to watch this but I don't have Hulu. I have a good relationship to pharmaceutical companies because of a childhood kidney transplant. I have to take meds and some of the meds have destroyed my body. But I am happy to be alive. It makes me crazy when people talk about the evil pharmaceutical companies. Okay, maybe for type 2 diabetics who could control their disease with weight loss, and stuff like that. But some of us NEED medicine.

One thing the prednisone did was to destroy my hips by my 40's. Most doctors didn't have any idea what was going on because I was nice and slim and fairly young. By the time I had my first hip replacement, the doctors said they were picking out broken bits of bone for hours. I don't think you can imagine how painful it was to be walking around like that for months before the surgery. Yes, I became a raving bitch, but looking back I know it was because I was in agony. And yes, this was about ten years ago when all of this bullshit was exploding, so sometimes it was hard to get the vicodin.

Yes, opioids are addictive, but yes, they should still be used. Make the doctors hire social workers to check up on people. Or something. But how do you think I feel about people who don't have pain but still abuse the dope? You got it, I don't care that much.

[quote] Yes, opioids are addictive, but yes, they should still be used.

Yes, but they shouldn't be given out by general practitioners for headaches and tooth pain. They should be prescribed by pain specialists who know the intricacies of these medicines.

Drug reps do this all the time--they convince generalists to prescribe drugs that most specialists wouldn't because there so are many more generalists and they don't know the details. Reps do this with all sort of meds, including strong antibiotics

[quote]Yes, but they shouldn't be given out by general practitioners for headaches and tooth pain. They should be prescribed by pain specialists who know the intricacies of these medicines.

This is such a bullshit position, as if ordinary doctors are too unsophisticated to understand how opioids work. The problem with OxyContin wasn't the level of knowledge of the doctors, it was that the drug companies lied about the nature of the drug and fudged test results. The show makes this clear that even though the Michael Keaton character was knowledgeable and wary of prescribing ordinary opioids, he was deceived into doing so. Pain "specialists" were just as fooled as everyone else.

[quote] This is such a bullshit position, as if ordinary doctors are too unsophisticated to understand how opioids work.

They are.

[quote] The problem with OxyContin wasn't the level of knowledge of the doctors, it was that the drug companies lied about the nature of the drug and fudged test results.

Pain specialists would know better the company was lying.

The very reason Oxy became a billion dollar drug is that the company got generalists to prescribe it like water to everyone.

R221 spectaculary misses the point. No, it's not a bullshit position to state the obvious: that highly addictive narcotics should never have been prescribed for tooth pain or headaches. The point is that they said a fucking OPIOID (comes from OPIUM) was being bandied about by its maker and its pushers as 99% non-addictive, which was exactly the opposite of the case.

How as any kind of doctor do you not realize that something called an opioid is derived from opium, a highly addictive substance? I think these doctors were seduced into a major suspension of disbelief.

No one has said otherwise, R 219. 🙄

They kind of did, R226.

Did anyone read the book this was based off of? Any good? Better than the series?

Doctors were under pressure on all fronts to warehouse and medicate ALL kinds of conditions in their patients. Everything was medicated. Not many doctors had the will to do old fashioned intensive personalized GP care. You need "gentleman doctors" for that and they were drummed out of the business in the US from 80s on. I had an uncle who was a "gentleman doctor" his hole career. he was a dinosaur by the time he passed. Meanwhile, I started traveling in Europe and personalized GP care is alive and well. The doctor greets you in his office, and has a chat. Then you move to an examining room. Then back to the office. 30 minutes is routine for a visit. One of many visits if you have an issue that needs a doctors individualized attention.

*his whole career. 😳 oops

[quote] Doctors were under pressure on all fronts to warehouse and medicate ALL kinds of conditions in their patients.

Absolutely agree!

Doctors have learned that patients rate you higher (and are more likely to stay your patient) if you give them a prescription or send them off for a test--so that's exactly what most doctors do. Plus, it's faster than having to take the time to listen to you and do a physical exam.

You got a pain? Here's medicine the drug rep told me about.

You assholes siding with pharma and blaming the pain patients have never been in serious pain. I hope you have to have teeth pulled with nothing but over the counter meds awaiting you. I hope your Jamaican hospice nurse steals your morphine at the end.

Knee replacements and back surgeries are a cash cow, and suddenly everyone has to have one at 60.

CPAP! Everyone has sleep apnea!

R232, I'm not sure who is blaming the pain patients here, but I'm definitely blaming Pharma (especially Purdue) for getting people hooked on a dangerous, highly addictive narcotic for profit, particularly when it's people who had nothing more than toothaches or headaches. They got whole swaths of people hooked--surely that's not how you solve the problem of people in pain?

I actually have a friend who for years only responded to opiates for debilitating migraine headaches, but she only took them when/as needed and never increased the dose so I am very sympathetic to people who use opiates for headaches.

And painting all pharma companies with a wide brush is as ridiculous as saying all right handed people are…There are some structural problems with misplaced incentives, but companies vary widely in their policies and actions.

I blame Purdue Pharma. They took a good, but very dangerous drug, told everyone it was less addictive when it was more addictive, engaged in shady even for the time marketing, violated Medicare anti-kickback laws and then engaged in RICO level intimidation of anyone who disagreed with them.

They ruined it for the people they addicted, the people they killed, people like me who lost two decades of research on alternative pain killers, the people like my friend who get denied effective treatment and all the families they destroyed.

I'm still irritated by R220's insistence that only pain "specialists" be allowed to prescribe opioids. So, let's say you've fallen off a ladder and shattered your shoulder, which had to be surgically repaired during a lengthy hospital stay (on which you were given a morphine drip, then weaned off to Percocet). You're released with a 6 week prognosis to having your cast/hardware removed. R220 is saying that during that time (when you can barely get out of bed or even wipe your butt without assistance), you're supposed to somehow make an appointment with a pain "specialist" (which could be weeks before they have an opening, since they're snowed under with all the other patients that used to be able to go to their own doctor), find a way to get there, sit in their waiting room filling out yet more paperwork, undergo another examination from someone who is NOT an orthopedic specialist to determine whether or not to prescribe the medication.

Result: Weeks without pain meds during the time when they're most needed, $$$ of extra costs for the specialist (who like as not is probably a huckster profiting off the boom in pain specialists R220 has mandated). This helps who (except the pain specialist)?

[quote] [R220] is saying that during that time (when you can barely get out of bed or even wipe your butt without assistance), you're supposed to somehow make an appointment with a pain "specialist"

Yes. It's exactly what needs to be done if you must use opioids. There are other non-opioids that can be used very effectively. If you must have opioids, you need a doctor overseeing the pain that actually understands that pain.

[quote] Result: Weeks without pain meds during the time when they're most needed, $$$ of extra costs for the specialist (who like as not is probably a huckster profiting off the boom in pain specialists [R220] has mandated). This helps who (except the pain specialist)?

In a functioning health system, you would get a pain specialist appt when you are discharged from the hospital after your injury. Would you go to your ophthalmologist to fix your shoulder? NO. Why are you okay with your orthopedist to figure out your pain meds?

There are now many effective pain medications that are not strong opioids

I couldn’t work for almost 3 months due to crippling back pain. 8 years ago I was prescribed hydrocodone for a similar problem and I was able to function. This time I was told to take Motrin (!?!) and was crippled for months and could have lost my job. Like abortion, easy to want to ban until you personally need it.

[quote] Result: Weeks without pain meds during the time when they're most needed, $$$ of extra costs for the specialist (who like as not is probably a huckster profiting off the boom in pain specialists [R220] has mandated). This helps who (except the pain specialist)?

The alternate result could be a lifetime addiction that ultimately kills you because you OD'd on heroin.

[quote] I couldn’t work for almost 3 months due to crippling back pain. 8 years ago I was prescribed hydrocodone for a similar problem and I was able to function. This time I was told to take Motrin (!?!) and was crippled for months and could have lost my job. Like abortion, easy to want to ban until you personally need it.

A pain specialist would know of numerous alternative pain meds that arent just opioids and motrin. That's the problem when you go to a generalist or orthopedist: they just know their specialty.

[quote] Like abortion, easy to want to ban until you personally need it.

No one is demanding it be banned. People are asking that doctors who have no idea about the consequences of opioids not be allowed to prescribe it.

[quote] you're supposed to somehow make an appointment with a pain "specialist" (which could be weeks before they have an opening, since they're snowed under with all the other patients that used to be able to go to their own doctor), find a way to get there, sit in their waiting room filling out yet more paperwork, undergo another examination from someone who is NOT an orthopedic specialist to determine whether or not to prescribe the medication.

You have no problem making an appt with your shrink because you're nuts; your urologist because you're impotent; your dietician because you're obese. Why is going to yet another medical provider such a big deal.

The irony is any doctor can prescribe opioids.

To prescribe the drugs meant to help opioid abusers, doctors have to take an 8 hour course

Specialists are few and far between in some places, guys. Especially rural areas. Appointments to see a specialist can take months, as in 4-5.

Please keep in mind that not everyone has quick access to a "pain specialist". It's not realistic to say that.

R246, Nor does everyone need opioids for their middling amount of pain

What are these other medicines that are as effective as opioids? I'd love to know. And are they safe for everyone? As a kidney patient, I am supposed to stay away from ibuprofen.

Shouldn't we ban booze too? A lot of people get addicted to it.

R249, Good idea! Let's draw up a Constitutional Amendment!

[quote] What are these other medicines that are as effective as opioids?

Try pot

Alternate to opioids

Opioids are definitely appropriate for many. Not everyone gets addicted.

BUT, you need to be overseen by a specialist who understands pain and addiction. Otherwise, docs just keep prescribing higher and higher doses

R249 equates alcoholism with addiction to heroin.

For decades GPs and surgeons effectively prescribed opioids to patients without significant problems because everyone had a healthy fear of addiction and understood the drugs were dangerous. Pain medicine docs were among the worst pushers of OxyContin. I don’t think that’s a useful restriction in most cases. Maybe a pain management specialist consult should be required for use over two weeks, or for former addicts who need pain management. But a week of post surgical Vicodin for someone with no history of addiction is a waste of time and money imho.

I was shocked to find that the medical system - at least in blue states - has gone from prescribing stronger and stronger opioids to (being forced to?) “prescribing” OTC NSAIDS like Advil for serious pain. It took me months to accept that this is the new reality. I am now terrified of end of life and am strategizing how I can either get a supply of emergency opioids or a supply of drugs that would kill me if I end up in crippling chronic pain.

[quote] Maybe a pain management specialist consult should be required for use over two weeks, or for former addicts who need pain management. But a week of post surgical Vicodin for someone with no history of addiction is a waste of time and money imho.

That's EXACTLY what's happening. Surgeons are giving only about 2 weeks of opioids post-op. After that advil/motrin should work fine. If not, then go to a pain specialist for more opioids

That pain people are still getting after a treatment cycle with opioids is likely the beginnings of an addiction. It's just manifesting itself as "break through" pain.

If you are dying you’ll still have access to all the opioids you need R256. Palliative care at end of life has very different rules.

You people are full of shit. Those "alternatives" are nothing. Physical therapy? That doesn't do anything. I tried it and it was just nonsense. It's a way to employ more people, which is fine, but that's it.

Do you really think most doctors prescribe higher and higher doses? No, they don't. They give you a prescription to get through your pain, with the expectation that you will heal and be okay for a while, or that you will need surgery in the future. And guess what, you will need a few opioids after the surgery, because YOUR BODY WAS JUST CUT OPEN, and you need to heal.

Alcohol messes up tons of lives, but you guys don't want to ban it because you like booze. That's why no one will talk about that.

R260, no one is saying opioid prescriptions should be banned. NO ONE. It should be given in short courses when needed.

The fact that you're freaking out about it screams "I'm addicted!!"

And I've been to a pain specialist in Princeton. He was creepy as fuck. He either didn't read my file or was too stupid to understand it. He tried suggesting some nonsense like Advil. I told him I wasn't allowed to take that. A lot of people really have no idea what they're doing.

R262, there are literally 100 pain specialists in a 20 mile radius of Princeton. Try another

[quote] If you must have opioids, you need a doctor overseeing the pain that actually understands that pain.

R227, who understands the pain pattern of a broken bone better, the orthopedist who spends all day setting the bones and overseeing the recovery, or some undefined pain "specialist" who treats all ailments? BTW, what exactly is a pain "specialist"? Is there an actual medical specialization that requires extra training, like nephrology or cardiology? Or is it a shingle someone hangs out who couldn't get picked up by a regular practice?

R261, I'm not addicted at all, except maybe to ambien. I just know what real physical pain is, and you dopes are saying all this shit without ever having experienced pain.

[quote]The alternate result could be a lifetime addiction that ultimately kills you because you OD'd on heroin.

I can work with that.

R264, I think we are on the same side. I agree with what you just said.

[quote] who understands the pain pattern of a broken bone better, the orthopedist who spends all day setting the bones and overseeing the recovery, or some undefined pain "specialist" who treats all ailments? BTW, what exactly is a pain "specialist"? Is there an actual medical specialization that requires extra training, like nephrology or cardiology? Or is it a shingle someone hangs out who couldn't get picked up by a regular practice?

For most surgeries of any time, pain goes away in about 2 weeks. That's what your orthopedist knows. Any more that that, your orthopedist doesn't know much about--which is why they just keep giving pain pills.

Yes, chronic pain specialists tend to come from the anesthesiologist pool. It's a subspecialty. There are many modalities to help, of which opioids are just one

R263, I don't need a pain specialist. I had my surgeries years ago and only have pain now once in a while or if I really overdo it physically. Thanks though.

Also, I did take opioids when I had my hips replaced but only needed them for a few months afterwards. I did NOT become a heroin addict but I did get through the pain without killing myself. I'm just one example, but I do know other people who have taken opioids for surgical pain and have not become addicted. We do exist.

[quote]We do exist.

We're by far the vast majority, actually. Even though addiction rates went up during the OxyContin days, it's was still not a sizeable portion of the population.

Yes opioids, at low levels, don't make addicts out of most. However, if you start needing stronger and stronger pills because the pain keeps coming back, that make be a sign that addiction is forming.

R271, stop lecturing just to try to prove your point. Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about.

People who need higher and higher doses are obviously addicts. We are talking about pain management during acute, or at times during longer, episodes. Stop arguing against pain killers. Have you ever been in real pain? Are you a doctor or similar? If not, then shut the fuck up!

[quote] We are talking about pain management during acute, or at times during longer, episodes. Stop arguing against pain killers. Have you ever been in real pain? Are you a doctor or similar? If not, then shut the fuck up!

WTF are you babbling about? I am in agreement with you that opioids are fine for acute pain and for intermittent pain. NEVER have I said I'm against pain killers.

If you are in chronic pain, no matter what the cause, your pain should be treated by a pain specialist, not by your orthopedist.

The big problem with OxyContin is Purdue targeted generalists and surgeons who don't understand longterm pain. They learned to just prescribe it whenever anyone said, "I have pain." And that was the problem. Addiction went unrecognized. This also became lucrative for everyone, do no one particularly had any incentive to make it stop.

If you have chronic pain, whether intermittent or continuous, go see a pain specialist and stop relying on the same doctor who treated the original cause of the pain.

R272 screams ADDICT!

R274 screams ADDICT!

Anesthesiologists have the highest rates of fentanyl addiction FWIW.

I think we all want to treat pain R272. That’s one on the reasons Purdue Pharma got away with their evil for so long. The venal they bribed. The well-meaning, which is most of us to some degree, they guilted. How dare we withhold a pain killer? What kind of awful people would do that? It was incredibly emotionally manipulative and it worked.

Hugs (R219) as I hear you.

I hope there is a follow-up series about how much pain meds are needed for acute and chronic pain.

Another plug for Empire of Pain, it was chosen as one of NYT 100 Notable books of the year and many think it will be in the shortlist of the ten best of year list.

[quote]For most surgeries of any time, pain goes away in about 2 weeks.

I had my hip replace a month ago. I go to physical therapy and some days I end up in enough pain that I can't sleep. I didn't need much oxycodone for the first two weeks. I never took more that two 5mg a day and most days I didn't. I now take a half or a whole some days depending on my pain level. Your blanket statement is ill-informed and nonsensical.

I had no idea Oxy was so highly addictive. The fact that Purdue touted it as basically being as harmless as Tylenol for pain management blows my mind. And the study they based it all on turning out to not be an actual study on addiction at all. All in the name of making money. The owners and shareholders and drug reps should have all been thrown in jail for life.

The complicity and complacency of the FDA at the time doesn’t surprise me.

Have you spoken to your surgeon R279? That doesn’t seem like something that should be happening.

My wife had a hip replacement a couple of years ago and she didn’t have any pain from the physical therapy. She was in terrible pain immediately following the surgery, but by day four she was well enough to stop all opiates and the physical she found very easy. I know knee replacements can be more problematic, but hips shouldn’t be so bad. You don’t want to ignore something that could be a sign of an infection.

I found this for you R279.

My brother has had migraines since we were kids, he has been to many of the best hospitals and they are so extreme they were worried abour him being suicidal because there is no cure for him. I know he was on Oxy for a bit and went to some hospital rehab for it, will have to find out more (he lives in NY and I live on the west coast). He is married with children and is a super involved father but he actually missed his daughter's graduation because he had a migraine because he is incapacitated when he has one. I wish they could find something to help his pain that wasn't addictive.

The options for severe chronic pain are extremely limited. While I agree opiates are a problem due to their physically addictive nature, I also know people who are in so much pain that they consider suicide. I think for some people being on opiates is a better solution than living in a state of constant pain and wishing for death. Especially for older people, doctors should be more liberal. I’m fine with a 70 year old being dependent on opioids to live without chronic pain.

R260 r265 r269 r284 Yeah. That's the big problem I have with the current conversation. Nobody wants to discuss the other side of it. All of the compassion goes to the people who became hooked but none to the people who are trying to get through the day with a life altering and severe physical injury. While I don't doubt that some doctors and pharma companies behaved badly a fair amount of these current ODs are from people who stole or obtained the meds illegally. Everyone acts like all of the people who became addicts had the drugs foisted on them. Why are chronic pain sufferers being punished for the actions of people who weren't even prescribed the drugs to begin with?

[Quote] Your blanket statement is ill-informed and nonsensical.

Your experience is highly unusual. Hip replacements usually heal quickly (unlike knee replacements)

[Quote] Why are chronic pain sufferers being punished for the actions of people who weren't even prescribed the drugs to begin with?

How are chronic pain sufferers being punished? OxyContin and other opioids are fully available.

Elderlez and others, I would say that recovery from hip replacement usually takes more than four days. To the person who is still going through recovery, I think you are doing fine. I was told not to expect full recovery for months. I really can't remember when it really got better, but I'm pretty sure it took longer than four days.

It really pisses me off when people belittle hip replacements and say they are so much easier than knee replacements. That's really annoying. Have you had both done? Do you really want to get that nitty gritty and compare lives to that level?

R287, I haven't tried to get any dope (except tramadol) for years. I know my urgent care will prescribe that, but only a few. So no, I don't think it's easy to get painkillers anymore.

Full recovery from a hip replacement takes over a year. Recovery and pain are two different things. Acute pain that is getting worse weeks after a hip replacement is a sign that something has gone wrong and the surgeon needs to be contacted.

[Quote] So no, I don't think it's easy to get painkillers anymore.

No, not from an urgent care or a generalist (they can all still prescribe it but they know the dangers so don’t), but if you have true chronic pain, opioids are still available to you—through orthopedists and chronic pain specialists

[Quote] It really pisses me off when people belittle hip replacements and say they are so much easier than knee replacements. That's really annoying. Have you had both done?

I have not done either but know at least 4 people who have done both. To a person, they say hip replacements are much easier

R279 here. Thanks for your suggestions but I really am healing nicely. My hip replacement was not planned. I had a traumatic break from a fall. Much different from having it replaced because of osteoporosis or arthritis. I was really speaking retrospectively. I had a bad few days but am feeling much better.

Awesome series. One of the best I’ve seen. Rich people protecting their money.

I am now rewatching this series for the third time. The ep 1 opening with John Cash’s song hypnotically dovetailing the various stories is one for the ages. This series is so well done!

I’ll let you DLers debate the whole pain pill thing. There are amazing comments here and I just look in awe at them. (I’m old and had these pills briefly for abdominal cancer and ski accidents. They were fabulous in ending the pain. But they sure had side effects of constipation, confusion. and vomiting.)

Everyone connected with this series, especially Michael Keaton, Mare Winningham, Kaitlin Dever, and Peter Sarsgaard deserve awards.

Carry on you fabulous posters!

Constipation is one of the side effects that makes me avoid opioids. It's terrible not being able to relieve yourself and end up shitting rocks. I had Vicodin after toe surgery and had to call the plumber to unclog my toilet twice. Embarrassing.

R296c have Metamucil whenever you use opioids.

Thank me later

They could have stopped the opiod pandemic by simply banning the,...they did it in the 80s with Quaaludes. ig pharma must have their hands in some deep pockets in Congress.

What is it about OxyContin that destroys lives? the price? Why not give the Oxy to the addicts and let them muddle through quietly and not become thieves or addicted to illegal drugs? Oxy manufactured by legit Pharma is safe, isn't it?

Is all about the money...

R298, Sure, ban drugs that are extremely helpful to the 99% of people who take them as directed because of the 1% who abuse them.

BTW, the number of opioids prescribed has almost been cut in half since 2012. Yet the number of opioid abusers are at an all time high and growing. So obviously restricting legal distribution doesn't work.

r301...bullshit. They could still be made available under strict doctor supervision for those who truly need it...yould be surprised the number who dont.

I'm glad you're not the one make the prescribing decisions, R302.

l am horrified by the sackler family and what they did that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths over 20 years. I also expect to use Opioids after surgeries or when in extreme pain for short periods of time.

A reminder that with Oxycontin, the company claimed 1) it wasn't addictive 2) should be prescribed to everyone in immediate or surgical pain as well as chronic pain patients 3) should be prescribed for as long as the patient thought they needed it and 4) doctors should double the dose as soon as signs of addiction present themselves with "Breakthrough pain"

Again - whatever the history may be ( which is what Dopesick explains), the current OD crisis is due to fentanyl NOT OxyContin. People need to understand that the pill mills have been shut down - and, in fact, opioid prescriptions have been banned even for those who previously would have been considered in need in every responsible state. Now those with severe chronic back pain are given Advil,p or Motrin.

The irony is none of these drugs have been banned at all—but people on this thread are babbling as if no one can get them.

Oxy is still widely available. Dr’s are just more discerning about who to prescribe them to. If you have real pain, you can easily get a prescription.

[Quote] the current OD crisis is due to fentanyl NOT OxyContin

Yes, ODs have been fueled by fentanyl but they didn’t start with fentanyl. Lots of people are still addicted to Oxy and heroin because of the original prescriptions (an estimated 50%). Any of them are a set up for OD

Look. Purdue had doctors believing it was as harmless as an aspirin and could be used like one. Doctors were talked into using it based on the bullshit Purdue fed them. They had the FDA approval, they had trusted, famous experts and data telling them how unique this was, etc. They were lied to. Period. I'm not against pain meds. But when the data is manipulated to promote outright lies, and the FDA is corrupted enough to mislead and give medical professionals a false sense of security, something has to be done. Purdue was greedy and criminally corrupt. And it's not just the addict who's affected. It's the entire community. It's not one family, it is millions of families. Thee is a real cost involved. It is tangible.

But, r308, how could any doctor think an opioid based drug would be non-addictive?

R309, generalists don’t know the details of opioid based drugs. They’ve been told by slimey drug reps (backed up by scientific papers—all funded by Purdue) that these drugs were safe.

Because the FDA approved label said it was less addictive than other opiates R309.

A normal drug company would have developed OxyContin as the improved replacement for MS Contin for severe and end of life pain and marketed it by extolling its superiority to MS Contin and its newly available generic competitors. Then we could be having a normal big pharma conversation about whether me-too drugs to get around patent expirations should get the same period of patent exclusivity as truly novel drugs. Or we could be discussing the ethics of prescribing a drug that is 10% better, but 500 times more expensive. That’s normal drug company structural issues with incentives stuff.

Now that I’ve seen the whole series I don’t see all the fuss about the last scene. I thought Michael Keaton was brilliant in this, but the last scene was nothing special imho.

I assume they made Bets a lesbian to balance evil lesbian Kathe Sachler.

[quote] A reminder that with Oxycontin, the company claimed 1) it wasn't addictive 2) should be prescribed to everyone in immediate or surgical pain as well as chronic pain patients 3) should be prescribed for as long as the patient thought they needed it and 4) doctors should double the dose as soon as signs of addiction present themselves with "Breakthrough pain"

Dn’t forget the lovely term ‘pseudo-addiction: id they seem addicted, just give them more!’ I wish i believed in hell, because thats where The Sacklers and all their many, many enablers belong.

[quote] pharma must have their hands in some deep pockets in Congress.

Haven’t watched yet, have you!

Pseudo-addiction is, of course, addiction. If the pain is coming back even worse, it’s addiction.

I auditioned for a role in this months ago, and the part of the script I got to read was great. I'm excited to see it.

And the Sacklers recently walked away with a slap on the wrist...and NO criminal charges. We need judicial and legal reforms yesterday.

But rich families donate lots of money so Congress would never increase penalties

I am still pissed with you people saying you know how which types of replacements are more painful than others, and you know how long the pain does or should last after a procedure. Has anyone on this board had both a hip and knee replacement? I'm not talking about people you know, I'm talking about you personally. I doubt either is a good time. I think the people saying this are kind of assholes, actually.

What else do you people think is no big deal, besides hip replacements? Wisdom teeth extraction? Migraines? Giving birth?

This is interesting for all of you dismissing the complications of the recovery process.

I'd like some Oxy.

I regularly battle on here with the Anti-AA trolls. I'm a big fan of the 12 step programs and think they're helpful life management programs for anyone with a substance abuse problem. They're great for alcohol, food, gambling, weed (which is not physically addictive but it's a drug and can be abused) and probably even cocaine.

What I got out of DOPESICK is the recognition that opioids cause brain damage so severe that the addiction is intensely physical and can take years to recover--which is longer than many survive the addiction. a 12 step program has a solid benefit for any former addict, since it gives them a community to build a new life--as well as providing guidance how to re-integrate with their former communities and family members they've alienated over years of terrifying behavior. But a nightly meeting is not going to create abstinence in an opiate addict the same way it might for an alcoholic or gambler .

AA says that addiction is spiritual, emotional, and physical. They dont get too much into percentages on that. It's not important. With opiate addicts, it's so much more physical than any other drug that initial abstinence is mainly a medical issue for a very long time.

I have severe arthritis in my knee and hip on the Left side. It's getting worse I'm in my 60's and was a heavy drinker and smoke and now that I have stopped cigarettes and cut way back on the drink, I still have to pay for my sins. My Ortho guy, specialist, wanted to put me on steroids. No way. My kidneys couldn't take it. No cortisone shots for me. So I'm taking a Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory. Oh, I also told them I was allergic to opiods and would not take them. I'm losing weight.

Glad to know that NIH is starting to seriously invest in pain research now.

Yes - it’s crazy that they just pulled all opioids and told people that physical therapy was now the only “treatment”. PT and NSAIDs are useless in comparison.. There is a film “Pain Warriors” on Prime or Netflix that discuses the issue. Doctors who are sympathetic and patients who were basically just cut off after years of opioid treatment.

Until something effective is developed they should allow use of opioids. Ridiculous that a drug that technically is legal is made effectively illegal by prosecuting doctors who prescribe them.

Watch this.

It’s horrific.

These guys killed people just as if they were german soldiers rounding up “undesirables.” They turned people into drug addicts so they could become rich. They had a stripper in charge of the Midwest’s division of a pharmaceutical company. They “encouraged affairs between female employees and doctors”…ie, they paid their strippers to fuck prescribers so the prescribers would prescribe the highest dose of pain medication to patients. They are despicable and they thought nothing of it. They thought the6vepukdn5 ge5 caught, since so few of these scumbags get caught.

This is swinging too far in the other direction. My niece had all four of her wisdom teeth taken out today and her parents don't want to give here the codeine that the doctor prescribed. I'm the only one in this group who had all my wisdom teeth taken out at once (and in hindsight, I'm really glad I did). But I was in agony for about three days.

I think that episode did kickstart some weight loss for me though, because it hurt too much to eat.

This series is fantastic. I always love Peter Sarsgaard but Keaton knocked it out of the park—the scene where he begs Billy for oxy made me cry. And Billy was a perfect character, I’m glad they resisted the temptation to make him a hero in the end, because he always weak. Kaitlyn Dever and Mary Stuart Masterson were so well cast as mother and daughter - they have the same eyes!

I watch a lot of documentaries and films about white collar crime, fraud, etc. This series is the closest to accurate I’ve seen about life as staff in a bureaucracy. They nailed it - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It’s eerie to come to this thread and see the same lines about pain that we know Purdue pushed to sell oxy.

R326 that was Mare Winningham, not Masterson.

*makes Billy’s regretful expression*

I believe Michael Keaton and Robby Benson were once good friends and roommates.

Some troll is clearly high on oxy with their Benson comments.

Okay, that young Brit, will poltier or something, he’s shirtless in a scene and is beautifully built

I noticed that too R331! And I’m not muscle fixated. He looked almost like a dancer or something, but a little more built.

Also, if I were a dyke I’d be so wet for tough talking rosario Dawson.

I also think her chunky ex-husband is cute

I can’t believe that was Phillipa Soo as Amber. That was another great character.

Yeah, such a vile bitch

R29 That’s what I hated about Will and Grace. I figured Jack could be “fabulous “ because Will was just this guy who happened to be gay, a guy like me. Then, they decided to turn Will into a neurotic mess, very stereotype.

You are discussing a show from twenty years hence

Fuck! Giuliani is in the series!!

A lot of the people they mention in the conversations involving DOJ are real, I was pretty surprised by that! But hey I guess it’s just the consequences of their actions…or lack thereof.

I’ve been reading up on the characters. It’s shocking that the sacklers are all free

I love nuns who throw themselves headfirst into actual work to help people even when it’s stigmatized, like the one in this show and Sister Helen Prejean. Very rare and special people.

Oh, this came up when I googled the series

That's rather momentous, R342, and not a little disconcerting.

yeah, that justice is still not being served is very disturbing

[quote] Okay, that young Brit, will poltier or something, he’s shirtless in a scene and is beautifully built

He’s prepping for his next role: a superhero an MCU movie, Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Gotta have that look. I approve.

Oh, I’m ready

Jaime ray Newman has the most terrible wig. Dykier than can be

and that bitch she plays, KAthé Sackler has the gall to say under testimony, "I wouldn't have ever done anything differently" - what a sack of shit

Binge-watching Quintuplets right now (a one-season wonder from 2004 I'd never even heard about), and it was so funny! Jake wasn't sporting a beard at the time (he was 18) and he was positively drool-worthy: the most gorgeous face ever, I couldn't be any more in love with him! Any deets on his love life? As far as I know, he's still unmarried and childless at 36, very much like Travis Milne from Rookie Blue (who was coincidentally born exactly 10 days after him). And Travis is obviously closeted, could Jake be as well? Although I wish he would go back to his 2004 lewk and lose the beard

fuk that shit, us old timers need our meds....

[quote] fuk that shit, us old timers need our meds....

Link?

After reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain and watching Alex Gibney’s 4-hour documentary, The Crime of The Century, Dopesick, despite its excellent cast, seems really heavy-handed, especially the dialogue for the Sackler family but even for the young lesbian coal miner character. The reason: Danny Strong. The hack who brought us, erm, Lee Daniel’s The Butler. It just lacks artistry especially in comparison to The Dropout which deftly dramatised the Theranos debacle without sacrificing strong characterisation of its subjects.

Gawd, this is like a really long Hubert Selby, Jr. novel.

I have extreme chronic pain and can't get any pain meds. I am old and the quality of my life is so bad that I am seriously considering suicide. I would prefer addiction. In the past, I have never been addicted to anything but would welcome it to this hell.

I was wrong, my initial impressions did not hold true. The first episode may have seemed a bit schematic but the characters of the piece quickly emerged; I think I cried through the last 6 episodes, maybe even 7. Amongst a stellar cast, I think Rosario Dawson was a real standout - I needed her character, her rage and determination to get through the series. Sarsgaard was really good too, everyone was. It was gut wrenching and infuriating to watch, even though I knew the story. There’s dope sick and then there’s the real sickness of “capitalism” that is ruining our country, practised without regulation and largely without consequence.

Anyway, other than the very confused timelines that I never quite got to grips with, this was very well done.

R354: I’m sorry you’re in so much pain. Please don’t give up.

Why R354. I don't know what the point of living is if your quality of life is so bad you can't even leave your apt. Or do anything really. You get injured working (I was a nurse) and then the stupid Gov tells you tough shit.

R357: are you on disability? Retired? How do you currently support yourself? How do you currently manage your pain? Do you have loved ones, friends, anyone nearby to look in on you? What is it you need to make your quality of life better?

I ask because the point of living, for me, is whatever you decide it is. It’s that simple.

And I’m curious…and hopeful…maybe someone here can help. Offer advice. Or support. Or hope.

I am on social security. I live alone and have no family. Was an only child and no children. It is really hard to try to keep myself going because the pain is always so bad plus I have COPD. I also have no car because my eyesight is bad and I don't dare drive. I have to walk everywhere. I suppose I could get in home health care, I live in CA but have put it off due to Covid. I am 72.

R359, I'm sorry and I wish I knew what to say. But to those of you who say life is what you make it, you have never been in agonizing pain. It's not something you can just think away.

R359: please don’t put off home health care because of covid. Many precautions are taken by home health care providers. And, aside from all the help they can provide you, they also offer a bit of hope and company, frankly.

Contact someone today about getting help. It can’t hurt. It can only help!

R361 It was my doctor who wouldn't let me get home health care 2 years ago because I only have 30% lung capacity and can't tolerate a mask. I had to go to face shields and ended up with covid 3 times. I live in a red county and I live in an elevator building and no one here has ever worn a mask. I don't seem to get very sick with it. As far as having company, I am an introvert and never get lonely. I can probably have my doc sign off for home health care at this point but think I put it off partly because I don't want people around. But I cannot put it off anymore. I am not afraid of covid. But home care still does not address my back pain. I use a lot of edibles at night and that seems to help but I have a fairly high tolerance and can't afford too much of it. As it is my monthly weed bill is around $200.00 a month.

So are the Sacklers shunned totally from society? I feel like that's the only punishment that they'd care about

God. Keaton asking Poulter that question in rehab KILLED me.

R362: I’m just so sorry you’re in pain. Get your doctor to sign off on home health. As an introvert myself, I totally understand about not wanting people around, but home health visits benefit you and only you. You aren’t expected to “give” anything back to the caregiver-and as such, the visits should (hopefully) not mentally/physically drain you like normal social and work situations would as an introvert. But, easier said than done. Hugs to you!!

Sort of saw that coming, R364. But yeah, it was still a bit of a shock.

I like Michael Keaton, and this is his best role ever.