This documentary looks at several middle class families and how well adjusted people had various illnesses of short duration and ended up addicted to OxyContin, then buying pills off the street when their doctors finally identified them as drug seekers, then to heroin as a cheap alternative, and then either ended up dead or in multiple relapses.
The illnesses involved were kidney stones, a cyst, and a C-section. The problem is, in the 1990s the manufacturers of the new opioid drugs were telling doctors that these drugs were not addictive over the long haul and that they could be prescribed freely for chronic pain. This is not to discount the usefulness these drugs have had for people in truly horrible long term pain due to cancer or car accidents, but M.D.s were passing prescriptions out like candy for a few years to people who didn't really need it and found themselves addicted in as little as one week.
There are stories of addiction, getting clean at clinics, and then relapsing at some point once released. Stories of children having to take care of and see their mother in a state that no children should have to endure, the stories of heartbroken survivors when the addict takes a fatal overdose.
There is also a look at a support group for parents who have lost children to this drug. The survivors are truly shell shocked, almost in disbelief that their Mayberry like existences would ever be permeated by drug addiction.
I can't remember if the documentary mentioned it or not, but you can't help but notice that everybody in this documentary is white and at least middle class. It could be because doctors have bias that makes them suspect non-white or poor patients. You also can't help but notice that all of the addicts here are offered rehab rather than incarceration.
This documentary is worth watching not because it breaks new ground, but because in spite of the warnings and the settlement with Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, ten years ago, this epidemic is still with us.
