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Dopesick (2021)

2021 · Drama · dramatized-true-crime, political-drama, period-near-history

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Dopesick is a US prestige limited series dramatizing the origins and catastrophic spread of the opioid crisis through the lens of Purdue Pharma's marketing of OxyContin. It weaves together the stories of addicted patients in rural Appalachia, DEA and DOJ investigators, and the Sackler family boardroom in a non-linear structure that rewards close attention. The tone is relentlessly bleak and morally serious — less a thriller than a grief document — and reviewers with personal experience of addiction treat it as the most accurate portrayal of opioid dependency ever put to screen. Michael Keaton anchors a large ensemble, and the show functions simultaneously as character study, procedural investigation, and systemic political indictment of pharmaceutical industry corruption enabled by regulatory capture.

From the reviewers

Withdrawals in particular are shown here in great deal where most shows barely touch on it if at all. They just nail everything.
This was one of the best shows that really show how devastatingly painful and scary withdraw is.
I am a recovering heroin addict, who started with Percocet because of an injury, and very soon found myself on OxyContin. This show is unlike any other in it's portrayal of addiction.
I'm a pharmacist and lived through the events depicted. I've been amazed how factual this series is. All that stuff that Purdue Pharma reps told doctors and pharmacists-so many well-designed lies-and we fell for them.
Michael Keaton has pulled together the story of the century here, and the story line is written in a way where this complex, multi-layered travesty is exposed clearly and cleanly.

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