Or so we thought.
There was a resurgence in the amount of opiate prescriptions in the late 90s. After all, they do allow a chronic pain sufferer to live a life free of crippling pain. But in the 90s, the language surrounding opioids was far less careful, and far more optimistic than now. Pain medications like OxyContin were now prescribed to sufferers with chronic pain, whereas before it was a medication more typical of cancer patients.
The intentions were good enough to begin with: take the pain medication and live your life comfortably. It was believed that opioids could, and should be used long-term for maximum efficiency. Gone was the less-developed worry of developing an addiction. In fact, the pharmaceutical company, Purdue, put out a series of videos lauding the positive effects of long-term opioid use. The company even went as far as to describe the supposed phenomena of “pseudo-addiction,” the concept that the mere exposure to opioid medication could cause a user to worry enough to believe themselves addicted, even if untrue. Of course, this was long before the true devastating effects of perfunctory opioid distribution became known.
OxyContin was believed to be a new medication that was safer than many of the other popular pain medications. They were advertised with an emphasis on the beneficial effects of living your life to the fullest beyond pain—being able to enjoy yourself without the major distraction of chronic pain. Being able to work, hold a job, and provide for your family may have not been an option before. These people were presented as having obtained some kind of miracle cure. But years later, many of these portrayed people wished they’d never been prescribed an opioid at all.
As revisited by John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, an interview with a woman who had been dubbed one of the poster children of Oxycontin, as viewed in an infomercial for the medication by the pharmaceutical company Purdue.
She lost her home, car, and job to opiate addiction. Yet, in those initial videos created by Purdue, she was happy, carefree and able to live her life happily.
