Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
"Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes."
This book was so challenging for me to listen to. For two years I worked with patients who had chronic pain – many of whom were dependent upon opioid pain medications. Throughout my training I had heard many stories of how the opioid epidemic came about, but listening to this book revealed a much more calculating effort to get people hooked. One of the saddest things I saw day-in and day-out was good people who had come in seeking relief from legitimate pain, and ended up dependent on drugs just to function. These drugs have now killed over one million people in the United States and ruined countless other lives. The Sackler family played a key role in this injustice.