Minor spoilers for on Netflix Pain reliever are ahead. If you haven’t seen the limited series, you can stream it with a Netflix subscription.
The Netflix drama Pain reliever, which tells the story of the rise and fallout of OxyContin, doesn’t hold back on showing the pleasure and deep pain that comes with opioid addiction. While the show is a book-to-screen adaptation of a New Yorker article and book of the same name, the show’s director Peter Berg also drew on personal experience to better describe the fight against opioids. In an exclusive interview with ReelBlend, he explained what it felt like to take Oxy and how it helped them figure out how to capture that feeling.
Peter Berg candidly explained that he once used OxyContin recreationally while talking to Sean O’Connell and Kevin McCarthy on the CinemaBlend podcast ReelBlend. Discovering what it felt like, he said:
So, I took OxyContin once in my life recreationally. I felt like I was being let into a warm bath of honey. It was an incredibly nice feeling.
He went on to explain that it’s “indisputable” that OxyContin works for people who are running away from pain, and the show directly addresses this by having Richard Sackler, the man who brought the drug to market, talk about how if people want to get away from pain, they have to “run to pleasure”. While it may feel good for a second, the consequences are dire, as the show shows, and Berg explained:
However, and something we tried to show in equal parts was that yes, the drug has some appeal. But the price you pay is brutal and heavy. And that high goes away.
Speaking back to my own experience, Friday Night Lights the creator said he also tried cocaine once and he told his son that “it’s the greatest drug in the world.” However, he immediately realized that it was not worth doing it again, because:
You feel amazing, you’re funny, you’re alive, you’re happy, you’re sexy, you’re all of those things in about 15 minutes. And then it falls. And then you do what you can to stand up and feel great again for about four minutes. And then it falls. And you try to come back and it starts to go down and down and down and down until you’re in a deep dark quagmire of hell and misery and self-destruction. To me, that’s part of the opioid game. This is part of the opioid journey.
This trip is shown in Pain reliever, specifically through Taylor Kitsch’s character Glenn. As we hear from families who have lost loved ones to OxyContin addiction in the disclaimersand we see the creative way depicted by Berg Richard Sackler probably realizes the pain he has caused, Kitsch’s character is the one that shows the timeline of what happens when someone struggles with Oxy addiction. He injures himself early in the series, is prescribed the drug by his doctor, and subsequently becomes addicted to it. The director said:
You might feel good for a moment, and I did. I realized very quickly after that time that I didn’t want to go near it because it felt too good. The price you pay when the check comes is what we saw in the character that Taylor Kitsch plays, Glenn, who started out and everything was great and he got his life back for about a month and then the spiral starts.
When it came to visualizing this spiral in the show, Berg used a scene from Episode 5 as an example. In the sequence, he showed the juxtaposition of the highest highs and lowest lows using OxyContin, Lone survivor the director went into more detail, saying:
The drug reps use Oxy recreationally and are completely crazy and everything begins to spiral into this twisted, euphoric, fractured kaleidoscope of experiences. We cut to Taylor Kitsch’s character trying to detox by himself in a garage with a can of Gatorade. I definitely do not recommend that people take this drug, it is a very dangerous game to play with yourself.
As Berg explained his own experiences with drugs like OxyContin and cocaine, he noted how it helped them show the spiral of drug addiction. He also explained what he hopes audiences will take away from watching Pain reliever. Speaking to these takeaways, he said he wants the public to think twice about what they’re being prescribed and make sure they’re looking after their loved ones and checking on them, especially when they’re in a situation where they’re prescribed a drug like OxyContin .
Pain reliever is the latest limited drama released on 2023 TV Scheduleand you can stream it right now on Netflix.