Editor’s note: This essay contains spoilers for the Netflix show “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
“Watch “The Fall of the House of Usher” on Netflix when you can. F**cking Great! Totally based on the Sacklers—Fictional obviously but so damn good!”
This was the message nationally known recovery advocate Ryan Hampton sent me recently. He is one of many advocates I have come to know, befriend, and collaborate with in my 22-year quest for accountability since my son passed away after taking an OxyContin at a party and never waking up.
I had read a short article a while back on this show marrying some of Edgar Allan Poe’s short horror stories with a modern family whose pharmaceutical company has made a fortune selling a highly addictive opioid that it promises is not habit-forming. However, it didn’t instantly make my must-watch list, like “Dopesick” and “Painkiller” did, because I’m not a fan of horror and it’s fictional.
But Ryan’s text made me cue it up. My wife’s eyes lit up when I brought up the recommendation — she’s a horror fan, especially during the haunting season. We settled in on a recent Saturday night to start what turned into a mini binge session.
Right away I started to see the references Ryan had mentioned. Watching it play out in a horror story was like living my and countless others’ revenge fantasies.
In an early courtroom scene, the prosecutor says that no one in the “Usher crime family” has faced any consequences for what they have done. “Sackler cartel!” I thought — that’s what I call those who served on the board of Purdue Pharma, the family-owned and felony-convicted company that, unbelievably, continues to make OxyContin.
More references followed, such as the 20-year secretary that the company turned its back on in her time of need. As documented in Patrick Radden Keefe’s great book “Empire of Pain,” a Purdue Pharma secretary started OxyContin after her boss suggested she take it and then was fired after she became addicted. There were also the ironclad nondisclosure agreements that the company insisted all employees sign and pills being crushed before being snorted.
During a news clip discussing a pill mill, the famous photographer and activist Nan Goldin with her SHAME ON SACKLER banner flashed in the background — a real-life image from one of her many protests to remove the Sackler name from museums and institutions. It brought a smile to my face as I reminisced about the time I finally got to meet her as we protested in 2021 outside the courthouse in White Plains, N.Y. The Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case was overseen by a handpicked judge who granted civil immunity to the Sacklers through a controversial maneuver known as nonconsensual third-party releases. Now it’s headed to the Supreme Court, and our protest that day helped change the law in New York state to prevent judge shopping.
The most direct reference to the lies of Purdue Pharma salesforce was the Usher family’s company pitching the fictitious drug Ligadone as non-addictive despite ample evidence to the contrary. This was followed by a subtle and masterful analogy.
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is a well-known saying. But Roderick Usher — the family patriarch and the lead villain whom I saw as Richard Sackler — goes on a two-minute diatribe about how to totally change the public perception of lemons with a well-funded and coordinated influence campaign. It called to mind Purdue’s launch of OxyContin and the way the company managed to convince the medical establishment to upend their doctrine and freely prescribe opioids for moderate pain. The Ushers’ repeated insistence that they offered a “cure for pain” reminded me of the Purdue spin machine.
The show made an effort to humanize its villains with a storyline about how Roderick and his twin sister grew up in foster care. But instead of feeling empathy, I was enraged as I thought about the foundation started by then 9-year-old Gracie Parker for all of the opioid orphans who were thrust into the foster system. (Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Demon Copperhead” tells a compelling fictional story of how opioids have destroyed families.)
I was — pardon the pun — hooked. We binged six episodes in two days, then finished it after I received an email from a STAT editor asking if I would be interested in writing on the show.
In the two decades since I began my journey as an activist, I’ve spoken with literally thousands of parents, spouses, children, and other loved ones who lost someone to this manmade, greed-fueled plague. A fictional piece of horror has described this real-life terror in a way I had not seen it before.
While watching the show and trying to figure out if a character was the actual devil, my wife reminded me of something I have always said: Given the lack of criminal prosecution over the years, it is as if the Sackler Cartel made a deal with the devil.
Before the teenaged Lenore passes away, she is told how her mom starts a foundation in her name and saves countless lives. This choked me up as I thought of all the brave moms I know who have done this exact same thing in memory of a child — sometimes children — who were victims of the Sackler-ignited opioid epidemic.
The final episode offers a breathtaking visual portrayal of the lives lost in the opioid epidemic. The numbers surrounding the opioid crisis are impossible to comprehend: In 2021 alone, more than 80,000 people died from opioid overdoses. From 1999 to 2021, almost 645,000 have died. And those numbers are likely undercounts.
In the end, I could not help but think: Wouldn’t it be nice if karma struck in real life just like in this show?
Using a horror series to reveal what has been a true nightmare for anyone affected was genius. As an activist, as a grieving father, my hope is that deaths from opioid overdoses will someday happen never more. But that won’t be possible unless those responsible face more than just fines for deadly crimes.
Ed Bisch is an information technology worker in Trenton, N.J., the founder of Relatives Against Purdue Pharma, a member of the Opioid Industry Documents Archive’s National Advisory Committee, and a member of several groups and committees battling the overdose and fentanyl poisoning crisis. He also has a claim in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy and is a member of the ad hoc committee on accountability in the case.