How Netflix’s ‘Painkiller’ Brought in Real Parents To Drive Home the Opioid Epidemic’s Aftermath

Painkiller, Netflix's six-episode limited series that fictionalizes the nation's opioid crisis, tells the story of how the Sackler family's push on a single drug, OxyContin, led to a rapid rise in addiction and deaths amongst Americans.

The series, created and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, is based on the journalistic work of Barry Meier and Patrick Madden Keefe (who both serve as producers on the show) in the late '90s and early 2000s. Speaking exclusively with The Messenger ahead of the show's premiere on Thursday, Meier explained how one tip led him to investigate one of the largest epidemics America has faced.

"I got a tip and it went like this," said Meier, who published his book Pain Killer in 2003. "There was this brand new drug called OxyContin that was turning up on the streets throughout towns. The strange thing about it was that the drug's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, was telling doctors and pharmacists that it was incredibly safe, that it couldn't be abused and patients wouldn't get addicted. The more I started digging into it, the more I realized that this was a myth. It was a con. It was a lie."

The opioid crisis continues to kill more than 100,000 Americans each year, and the series — which made its debut on Netflix on Thursday — aims to educate viewers and give them a better understanding of how it all began.

"Everyone knows that the opioid crisis is bad," director Peter Berg told Tudum last month. "But this is the origin story of the collision between medicine and money that allowed it to happen. One of the many things that I thought was missing [from the conversation about OxyContin] was the introduction of the drug into mainstream medicine. How Arthur Sackler, this psychiatrist from New York who specialized in lobotomies, started to realize that the future was in pills — specifically in advertising pills. Whoever could market their drug better was going to make the most money."

Executive producer Eric Newman added, "I think it's actually the greatest betrayal of public trust in history."

The main characters in the series are:

But the big stars of the show? The real-life parents who've lost loved ones to addiction.

Rather than employing a disclaimer to address the fictionalized elements of the show ahead of each episode, the creators invited parents who had tragically lost their children to opioids to read the message — a heart-wrenching, but necessary addition. These parents, who share their real stories and shed real tears, are ultimately why this series exists.

"People still don't have all the information," Newman told The Messenger. "Our hope is, people will stick with series and walk away with, not just a sense that there are two systems of justice in America — one for the very rich and one for everybody else — but also that this information that might save lives going forward is getting out there."