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American Pain

How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The king of the Florida pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortresslike former bank building, American Pain's doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and addicts who came by the vanload. Inked muscleheads ran the clinic's security. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns, and it was all legal . . . sort of.
American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis. The narrative, which swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, is populated by a diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs, and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as the penniless Kentucky clans who transformed themselves into painkiller trafficking rings. It includes addicts whose lives were devastated by American Pain's drugs, and the federal agents and grieving mothers who labored for years to bring the clinic's crew to justice.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 7, 2015
      This exhilarating blow-by-blow account details how brothers Chris and Jeff George and their sidekick, Derik Nolan, steroids-fueled collaborators with no prior medical experience, exploited Florida's lax prescription drug laws to operate the largest pain clinic in the United States, from 2008 until a raid brought it all crashing down in 2010. Money poured in so fast that bills were stuffed in garbage cans behind cashier windows. A corrupt doctor taught the brothers how to sell massive quantities of the legally controlled (and highly addictive) painkiller oxycodone under the guise of a medical clinic. As long as a physician prescribed the drug and told so-called patients to adhere to the recommended dosage, everything was considered on the up and up. Eventually, the George brothers ran rival clinics, and Chris George's American Pain became the premier facility of its kind on the East Coast, luring junkies from as far away as Kentucky and Ohio, where oxycodone control laws are tougher. Journalism professor Temple (The Last Lawyer) dissects the Georges' criminal operation and documents the rise and fall of American Pain with precision and authority in this highly readable true crime account. Agent: Jacqueline Flynn, Joelle Delbourgo Associates.

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  • English

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