Anatomy of an Epidemic: The Opioid Movie


 

Anatomy of an Epidemic: The Opioid Movie – Driving home from a hunting trip in 2008, Johnny Sullivan called his wife to say he was having trouble staying awake. It was early afternoon, but Mary Lou Sullivan wasn’t surprised. Her husband was a long-time user of the narcotic painkiller OxyContin (oxycodone) and frequently dozed off as a side effect, sometimes in the middle of chewing his food. About 10 years earlier, Sullivan and six other chronic pain sufferers had been featured in a Purdue Pharma promotional video for the drug, which Purdue makes. In the video, Sullivan stood at a construction site and talked about how the powerful narcotic eased his back pain and enabled him to run his company again. But a few years after being prescribed OxyContin, Sullivan became addicted to it and other prescription opioids, his family said. That afternoon in 2008, Sullivan, 52, fell asleep while driving and flipped his truck on a country road in North Carolina. “I told my sons one day ‘that medicine is going to kill him,'” his widow said. Expanding the market Purdue Pharma’s marketing of OxyContin in the late 1990s marked the beginning of the industry’s push to promote narcotic painkillers for treatment of chronic pain — an indication for which both safety and efficacy remain unproven. The first decade of the 21st century has been a good one for makers of prescription painkillers as sales quadrupled from 1999 through 2010, but even in a growth industry OxyContin stands out — ringing up sales of nearly billion a year

 

New DVD movie releases for Dec. 18

Filed under: Drug Addiction Help Milwaukee

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (Warner) An old-school baseball scout diagnosed with macular degeneration is forced to accept help from his estranged daughter when he's sent to check out a promising prospect. In this film starring Clint … BRO' (Lionsgate …
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There are good reasons to outlaw marijuana

Filed under: Drug Addiction Help Milwaukee

It is a gateway drug. If you don't believe me, ask the parents of many sons and daughters caught up now in addiction. Medical marijuana has been used as a foot in the door approach by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws with its …
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