Painkiller Episode 1: Netflix presents the American Crime Drama series “Painkiller,” which is based on real events. This series is currently streaming on Netflix with audio available in Hindi and English, along with subtitles.
In this article, we are going to discuss an episode-wise recap, but before that, let’s get an idea of the story of this series. This six-episodic limited series tells the story of the Purdue Pharma Company and how their new medicine became a health threat to people.
The story is based on true events, but everything in this series is fiction. Not only this, but it also depicts the real-life crisis of a person affected by OxyContin. In the beginning, we also see parents who are suffering from losing a child. In episode 1, we witness a parent introducing her son, “Christopher Trejo,” who was prescribed Oxycontin at the age of 15. He suffered from addiction for a long time and died at the age of 32.
Episode 1 starts with Richard Sackler, the leader of the Purdue Pharma company. His uncle, Mr. Arthur Sackler, is the founder of this company. Richard wakes up in a mansion; he’s kind of going mad and roaming everywhere in the mansion. He’s trying to stop the fire alarms but is unable to do so until a guard comes and helps him.
Now the show introduces us to Edie Flowers, a lawyer who is traveling to Washington DC to meet a group and discuss the Sackler family with them. She meets Brianna Ortiz and her associate Bill Havens. They are eagerly waiting to know what Edie knows about the “Purdue Pharma Company,” which is behind the start of the Opioid epidemic. Edie has faced everything that happened earlier, so she isn’t excited anymore. Right then, she sees an interview of Richard where he is giving testimony in the civil case against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Upon seeing this, Edie starts to help Brianna and her team. Edie starts telling her story.
Let’s go back to the past where Edie begins her investigation into OxyContin. In 1998, in Hillsville, Virginia, it all started with an X-ray machine. One day, Edie went for a checkup and met a doctor there. She actually wanted to see the GE 4225 portable X-ray of that doctor. Back then, she was an investigator with the US attorney’s office in Roanoke. She used to track down doctors who billed Medicaid for procedures they didn’t perform. Edie thought this was a kind of fraud. She checks the X-ray machine of Dr. Coyle and discovers something significant.
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Later, we see another aspect of Edie; she used to play video games too much but also loved her work. From Dr. Coyle, she finds something strange. In those years, only a few people had heard about OxyContin. But what OxyContin could do, nobody had any idea, and that’s Richard’s plan.
Mount Airy, North Carolina, is where the first cases of OxyContin arose. Cases of OxyContin occurred whenever representatives of the “Purdue Pharma Company” went to local pharmacies. There we see a couple, Glen and Lilly, in a car repair shop. Right then, we see their stepson named Tyler, who is badly affected by some drugs. He pushes Glen, and Glen gets badly injured. Doctor Hartman gives him some medicines.
Edie thinks this medicine is spreading like a plague. When the Sackler family discovered that there was a lot of money in medicine, they started to use it for negative purposes. Arthur Sackler started this; back then, he was a psychiatrist on the eve of the pharmaceutical revolution. Back then, people with mental health issues chose lobotomy as a cure. Lobotomy made a patient totally passive, which left Arthur unsatisfied. Arthur made a pill by which customers would come again and again; he named it “Thorazine.”
This pill became famous in America, and he became rich. After he died, his nephew Richard took over the business. Ten years after Arthur’s death, Richard started the beginning of “OxyContin.” After Arthur died, Richard made a plan to acquire some important things. However, a big dysfunctional family stood in his way from New York. Arthur left his whole family in debt. In this crisis, Richard made a plan.
He knew that people want to escape pain and seek pleasure. He studied human behavior and needs. Richard now had the Purdue Pharma Company, but he needed to find a drug that could be sold in huge amounts. He was working on “Pain” because everybody needs “Pleasure” to counter any kind of pain. This wasn’t the beginning; for the past 15 years, Purdue Pharma Company had been making and marketing a morphine-based painkiller named “MS Contin,” so “OxyContin” just needed a little recipe tweaking.
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Richard wanted to create a new drug. For this, the scientists at Purdue took a type of heroin and coated it in a time-release layer, then swapped it for a much stronger one. He preferred using oxycodone over morphine. That’s how he named his new drug “OxyContin.” Richard used to recruit some young, beautiful college girls to increase the sales of this drug. So, we meet Shannon Schaeffer, a college student.
She joins Purdue as a saleswoman and starts living with another woman named Britt, who has already achieved success at Purdue. Shannon and the other girls don’t know about OxyContin; they are just motivated by Britt. Shannon soon starts enjoying a glamorous life with Britt. Living with Britt, Shannon becomes greedy for money.
On the other side, we see Glen, who takes pills for his pain, but they’re not working. As he fails to recover, he and his wife go to the doctor and inform him that the previously prescribed medicines aren’t working. The doctor then prescribes him the new medicine “OxyContin.” However, it doesn’t help him; in fact, it gradually destroys him.
Edie finds out about Dr. Coyle’s conspiracy. He has been prescribed OxyContin nearly a thousand times in the past few months, which is kind of suspicious. This triggers Edie Flowers, and she starts investigating this new drug.
At the end of the series, we finally learn about the history of ‘OxyContin’. So, Richard Sackler combined greed and opium in a pill that can destroy a life. On the other side, a young girl is trapped in the selling of this drug, but she doesn’t know its real form. Let’s see what happens next.
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