CHANNELING A QUIET KILLER โ
Aug. 4, 2023 – Based on work by investigative journalists Barry Meier and Patrick Radden Keefe, Painkiller is a coarse-grained social epic, angry and impassioned, intent on covering all bases. Having introduced us to Sackler in his sterile McMansion, the plot swings out through small-town Appalachia. It spotlights the good-hearted mechanic whoโs sliding towards addiction; the โMalibu Barbieโ sales reps who target the family GPs; the whole rotten Venn diagram of federal government and big pharma. In the past 20 years an estimated 300,000 Americans have died after overdosing on prescription pain meds. But this is an epidemic largely confined to rural working-class communities. The consequences of OxyContin donโt trouble the Purdue executives up in leafy Connecticut. Iโm guessing they havenโt impinged much on Broderickโs life, either.
He shakes his head. โI donโt think Iโve known anyone whoโs been on OxyContin. Or who crushed pills and snorted them. Unless they didnโt tell me. But itโs a sprawling, complicated story, and we all have some experience. My mom had very bad pain from cancer. She was on those kinds of drugs for years โ not OxyContin, but it was an opioid โ and they helped her. So itโs difficult, because I can see the need for painkillers.โ He mulls it over. โI think the original intent to develop the drug is not inherently evil. Itโs only when you get people hiding the evidence of how addictive it is that it becomes an awful story.โ
The deaths may be localised, but the crime scene is vast. Everyoneโs implicated and compromised. Whoโs the monster, Broderick wonders. โIs it the man who developed OxyContin? Or is it the doctors who prescribed it, or the drugstores that sold it? There are a lot of villains. Itโs too simple to blame it all on one person.โ He grins, embarrassed. โIโm sounding like Richard Sackler here. But itโs true. A lot of people have done bad things in their life but if you talk to them, they never think theyโre doing bad things. Thatโs whatโs really scary: peopleโs capacity for self-delusion.โ
