FARALLON FILMS
Award-winning films by Steven Okazaki
“I was invincible, unstoppable, not even God could kill me.”
In 1996, Purdue Pharma launched Oxycontin, offering “smooth and sustained pain control all day.” Doctors, hospitals and patients immediately embraced the semi-synthetic opioid, making it the best-selling prescription painkiller in America, bringing in $31 billion in revenue for Purdue, and leading to widespread abuse and the opiate/heroin addiction epidemic that is now plaguing the country.
Crushed: The Oxycontin Interviews presents five young adults – Jordan, Liz, Clayton, Rachel and Richard -- whose lives were forever changed by Oxycontin. Their stories detail the nightmare of the pain-relief-addiction-recovery-relapse cycle; describing how they became addicted; the drug’s effect on their lives and the people around them; what they had to do to sustain their habits; and their struggle to get clean or die. It is a provocative and intimate portrait of how Oxycontin devastates lives.
A film by Steven Okazaki & Singeli Agnew
Produced by Tom Gorai for Blackwood Entertainment Group & ShadowCatcher Entertainment, LLC
2010 / Documentary / 18 Minutes