Details

Release year: 2021

Storyline

The series takes viewers to the epicenter of America's struggle with opioid addiction, from the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma, to a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the DEA.

Top credits

Cast

Michael Keaton — Dr. Samuel Finnix
Peter Sarsgaard — Rick Mountcastle
Michael Stuhlbarg — Richard Sackler
Will Poulter — Billy Cutler

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Awards

2 wins & 12 nominations

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Did you know

• In preparation for his role as attorney Rick Mountcastle, Peter Sarsgaard went to Dayton (OH) where he accompanied local police on ride-alongs, hung out with active opioid users, talked with afflicted family members and support groups, and went to a jail where he observed users trying to dry out. He has said that the hands-on experience transformed his perspective and imbued him with more empathy and understanding for the victims of the epidemic.

• Randy Ramseyer and Rick Mountcastle discover that many articles promulgating the notion that opiates are not inherently addictive or that "less than 1% of patients become addicted to Oxycontin" cite only one "study": the so-called "Porter-Jick Study." Dopesick depicts them going through a long research process to attempt to find this elusive study, only to discover that it was in fact not a study at all; it was just a brief letter to the editor of a medical journal. This element of Dopesick adheres closely to the historical facts: in 1980, the New England Journal of Medicine published a five-sentence letter from Jane Porter and Herschel Jick, MD, of the Boston University Medical Center. The letter outlined their observations of 11,882 patients who received opiate-based narcotic pain killers; they noted that under hospital supervision, only four of those patients who had no prior history of addiction became addicted. This was very far from being a peer-reviewed study (the scientific standard for evidence-based medical reports), but it was nonetheless cited as evidence of opiates' supposed nonaddictive qualities and used as the premise for the claim that Oxycontin was safe. In 2017, the New England Journal of Medicine published an analysis of the more than 600 times the Porter-Jick letter has been misleadingly cited to convince doctors and hospitals that addiction was not a concern. In a 2017 Associated Press interview, Dr Jick clarified that his short letter should never have been construed as scientific proof of anything, much less of a concept as deeply inaccurate as the idea that opiates are safe and nonaddictive: "'I'm essentially mortified that that letter to the editor was used as an excuse to do what these drug companies did. (...) They used this letter to spread the word that these drugs were not very addictive.' Jick said his letter only referred to people getting opioids in the hospital for a short period of time and has no bearing on long-term outpatient use.

• In August 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) temporarily blocked a nationwide six-billion-dollar settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, that would shield members of the family from civil lawsuits over the effects of opioids. SCOTUS has agreed to hear arguments in December 2023. In July 2024, SCOTUS permanently overturned the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy settlement. That meant that the Sackler family was no longer necessarily shielded from potential future lawsuits over their role in the creating and exacerbating the opioid crisis, but it also meant that settlement funds that had been due to disburse to governments to create opioid response, mitigation, and treatment programs are now delayed indefinitely.