American Pain, John Temple
American Pain, John Temple
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American Pain
How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic

Author: John Temple

Narrator: Charlie Thurston

Unabridged: 10 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/03/2015

Synopsis

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.

About John Temple

John Temple is an associate professor of journalism at the West Virginia University Reed College of Media. He is the author of The Last Lawyer, which won the Scribes Book Award from the American Society of Legal Writers, and Deadhouse. He lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, with his wife, Hollee, and their two boys.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ellen Gail on January 06, 2019

They had a license to deal drugs. No one was watching. It couldn't be this easy, could it? From the CDC, drug-overdose deaths from 2002 to 2014. From late 2007 to the spring of 2010, Chris George, his twin brother Jeff, and his friend Derik Nolan ran a string of pain clinics in Florida and set off......more

Goodreads review by Marcella on November 02, 2016

However you feel about drug policy in America, this book is pretty instructive about the regulatory and legal environment that allowed so many Americans to have continued access to, and thus deepen their addictions to, narcotics like OxyContin. The book centers around a specific case of especially e......more

Goodreads review by Andy on September 23, 2015

Having navigated the waters of the pain world since someone severely injured my lower back (I now have an intrathecal Dilaudid pump), I was looking forward to this book. Plus, I enjoy investigative journalism. I started American Pain last week and could not put it down. Not only is it fascinating, p......more

Goodreads review by Judy on August 22, 2015

This is an important book. It chronicles a "pill mill" in Florida that in the absence of oversight, was able to hire willing physicians and distribute vast quantities of opiates and benzodiazepams. As a physician who vividly remembers a conference sponsored by our state attorney general, to inform u......more

Goodreads review by Ginger on April 17, 2025

Florida corruption runs deep! This book highlights how a group of young men in Florida set up pill mills that fed into the opioid epidemic. Living in Florida, nothing in this book surprised me except that they were eventually stopped. Overall, I enjoyed this book. It presents like an investigative r......more

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