Dopesick aims to "warn" world about opioids and "correct" addiction narrative
The hard-hitting drama explains the story behind America's opioid crisis.
The team behind hard-hitting Disney+ drama Dopesick have described it as a warning to the world about the danger of opioids, after a big pharma company misleadingly marketed a powerful painkiller as less addictive than other opioid painkillers.
The thought-provoking series, which premieres on Star on Disney+ this month, follows the launch and later investigation into OxyContin from several different perspectives, including a small mining town and the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma.
The medication was aggressively sold to doctors with the claim that less than one percent of patients would become addicted, but this proved to be a complete falsehood and the effect has been devastating for the United States.
In an interview with RadioTimes.com, Dopesick showrunner Danny Strong explained what he aimed to achieve by making this dramatisation of the shocking scandal.
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"To educate people around the world and to warn them of the dangers of OxyContin and the deceptive marketing practices of Purdue Pharma," he began. "They pathologically marketed the drug as non-addictive, when in fact, it's highly addictive.
"And those marketing techniques... they've been spreading all over the world. So I thought the show could be a warning to different countries that if someone comes to sell you an opioid and they say it's not addictive, they're liars."
Dopesick star Will Poulter echoed the importance of education on this matter as "there's potential for this to happen anywhere else in the world", while adding that he hopes this series helps change attitudes towards those worst affected.
"The universal theme of addiction and the fact of addiction as a disease is something that I think we need to improve our general awareness around and also increase our empathy for," he told RadioTimes.com.
"Somewhere along the line, and this is certainly a narrative that Purdue preyed on, we vilified addicts in these stories. And anytime we hear about drug abuse, we think about the addicts as the sort of abusive people in the equation."
He continued: "But actually, I think something that Dopesick does is it tries to course-correct the narrative in that respect and point to the facts, which are that the only people who were really abusive in the scenario were Purdue, who vilified addicts.
"Their behaviour and their conduct in the introduction and marketing of this drug was the most abusive thing."
Dopesick includes a heartbreaking depiction of the damage caused by Purdue's actions, focusing on miner Betsy (Kaitlyn Dever), who is first prescribed OxyContin after suffering a serious injury at work.
Dever told RadioTimes.com that she took the role "really, really seriously" and consulted with a Dopesick crew member who had personal experience with opioid addiction.
"I did speak with someone who was actually on our production and ended up being a really, really important element for my character development," she said.
"And just truly, they were so supportive and open and kind with me and became a really, really good friend on-set. They were there every day and I was just able to ask them anything and they were so kind to me."
Dopesick premieres on Star on Disney+ on Friday 12th November. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
Authors
David Craig is the Senior Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering the latest and greatest scripted drama and comedy across television and streaming. Previously, he worked at Starburst Magazine, presented The Winter King Podcast for ITVX and studied Journalism at the University of Sheffield.
