Review - PainKiller - Netflix Mini Series - 2023

Hot topic - prescription drugs

Although I watched a ton of movies and tv shows lately, I had no interest in reviewing them simply thanks to my medication. I slept through a lot of days simply because I was too high on tramadol. And that is exactly why I wanted to watch this mini-series on Netflix about another opiate, OxyContin. I knew this was even heavier stuff than the Tramadol I'm currently taking for my back pains, but I was curious to learn more about how this drug came to rise to become a highly abused prescription drug as I knew nothing about it and only heard one person in my circle who had this drug prescribed.

All about the money

As with probably everything on the market, it's all about the money. The family who started the whole OxyContin story had another drug called Contin which they tweaked a bit to be able to market it differently. I won't spoil the full story but in short, it went down like this:

The guy who developed this drug died, and his nephew was left in charge of the company, together with some other board members who seemed to be family/business partners. The dead guy turned out to have quite a bit of debt and to make it worth the heir's while, they decided to tweak the drug they already developed to then take the profits and all have a bigger sum of money instead of just leftovers from his debt. This drug was called Purdue and this is where the story really started.

Smart marketing

Although I disagree with these pharma actions, I have to say that it was quite a bit of smart marketing they applied. While Morphine was connected to death for most people they asked when doing their research, they decided this new drug was supposed to be better in taking away the pain while not being a drug prescribed to cancer patients or dying people only. Before this pill arose, the market for morphine only contained the people in the last two out of 6 pain groups. Their new marketing idea was to add the middle two groups as their clients as well, focused on people's well-being (read: no pain) making it an appealing drug for other patients as well. As they said, this had never been done before and it was a clean slate so they speak to market these 4 groups instead of just the two worst pain groups only.

Marionets

They did a great job at making the salespeople believe what they were selling was good, to help people get rid of the pain. Most of them seemed to believe for a very long time they were doing a great job while getting high bonuses, penthouse apartments, and very expensive cars as long as they were on top of their sales. They recruited young, pretty ladies so they could manipulate the (mostly manly) doctors with their charm. Some actually slept with doctors to have a close relationship with the docs and make sure their sales went up.

Bonus paid by the MG

Instead of selling X tablets and receiving a bonus, they received bonuses per MG OxyContin sold. Some high-sales reps received a 42k dollars bonus in one round simply because they had enough doctors prescribing the pills as well as upping existing doses constantly. They fooled everyone by referring to non-existent research which was just an open letter published in a magazine. Nobody did fact-checking, that's for sure!

Addictions arose

Some people were targeting the company Purdue because they either had experience in their family losing someone to this addiction or because it was their job to find out if they had fraudulent bookings in their administration. It became clear quite soon that Purdue was not honest in their communications towards patients (or doctors) and kept saying the drugs were not addictive and that less than 1% had symptoms of addiction. In reality, they did not document the real data of the trials where it became clear that patients started to become dependent on the drug. A real epidemic was there, just like the crack cocaine epidemic. Only this time, the drug dealers were (mostly) dealing drugs legally. Of course, there was also a black market and sold on the streets but many salespeople made bank by selling this prescription drug to doctors and then making sure they were prescribing higher doses.

Lawsuit

In the end, there was a lawsuit, I will not spoil the outcome for you as I think it's good that you watch this mini-series to see a bit of big pharma's face. In the end, all these FDA approvals can be bought if you just find one corrupt person who is sensitive to money. I believe that this works the same in the real world. Of course, they had to mention some parts are fictionalized but seeing the real parents of real kids who are now dead before every episode hits you hard. They went through hell seeing their kids slowly become addicted zombies.

My own experience with opiates

The first time I received Morphine was after my daughter's birth with a C-section. It's normal to receive a shot every four hours after this surgery. It took me two shots to realize I was not tired from the surgery but the Morphine was causing me to drift away constantly. I didn't like the feeling and I told them to stop giving these and stick to paracetamol instead. For the second C-section, I did the same but unfortunately, for the last one, I had a lot more pain and had another day of Morphine shots to get through the pain manageably. In that case, the benefits outweighed the negative side effects for me.

Not long after the first C-section, I had a back issue and received Tramadol at some point to manage the pain. I had them for a month or so, having to ask for a new prescription each week by phone so no big stash at home. I remember it being heavy stuff, as it's related to Morphine.

Currently, I'm taking Tramadol with another drug combined as prescribed by my doctor for my back pains (suspected sciatica) and I'm very happy they exist! After taking my dose, it doesn't take too long for the pain to go away, and just feel pressure in my back only. When I ran out of these tablets, I got several new prescriptions, lasting 10 days each. Currently, I have just a small week left to see the trauma doctor to hopefully actively start a treatment on top of pain management. I personally hope that I don't need a refill of this after this round because this tv series was a good reminder not to get hooked on this stuff.

Must watch

Even if you don't have any experience taking opiates, I'd still recommend you to watch it so you have an idea of how this process of medicine approval can go. The average Joe will probably never dig into this stuff very deep before taking something the doc prescribes, while we probably should.

Posted using CineTV