Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

by Sam Quinones

OxyContin is a simple pill. It contains only one drug: oxycodone, a painkiller that Germans synthesized in 1916 from thebaine, an opium derivative. Molecularly, oxycodone is similar to heroin. OxyContin riffed off an earlier Purdue product: MS Contin. MS Contin was Purdue’s first foray into pain management using the Continus timed-release formula invented by Napp in England. MS Contin sent morphine into a patient’s bloodstream continuously—hence Contin—over several hours. To accomplish this, MS Contin came in large doses of morphine: 15, 30, 60, 100, and 200 mg. Purdue marketed it to cancer patients and people just out of surgery, and MS Contin apparently served them well. Likewise, OxyContin contains large doses of oxycodone—40 and 80 mg typically—wrapped in a timed-release formula that slowly sends the drug into the body over several hours. It has legitimate medical uses, and has assuaged the pain of many Americans, for whom life would otherwise be torture.