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Joshua Kennedy Lyon is an American journalist and author. He is the author of Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict, published by Hyperion on July 7, 2009. Pill Head is part memoir, part investigative journalism and chronicles prescription painkiller abuse in America. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. [ citation needed ]
Joshua Lyon was born in Nashville, TN. He attended high school at Hamilton Central in Hamilton, New York and majored in Literature at Purchase College.[ citation needed ]
Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict [1] is part memoir and part investigative journalism. The book weaves together the stories and views of addicts, doctors, experts and governmental agents—demonstrating how the lives and decisions of each are intertwined in America's drug epidemic.[ citation needed ]
In the summer of 2003, Lyon noticed a large amount of email spam promoting easy procurement of drugs like Valium, Xanax, and Vicodin, without a prescription. In the name of "journalistic curiosity,", [2] Lyon convinced his editor to let him try to buy the pills online for a story, to see if the emails were legitimate.
Lyon acquired the online drug delivery with a budget of $600 provided by Fairchild Publications. [2] Lyon wrote the article and later that night his curiosity led him to sample from the stash. Lyon recounted in his book that his editor called him in a panic, and asked what he had done with the pills.[ citation needed ] She was nervous that he had taken them. He assured her that he would flush the pills down the toilet, then promptly went and took three Vicodin. "That was all it took to seal the deal — I'd discovered my perfect drug," he said in the book.[ citation needed ]
Pill Head received a starred Kirkus review, [3] and Mother Jones named it one of the top books of 2009. [4]
Lyon is also a professional ghostwriter and co-author. His co-authored [5] book with YouTube personality Joey Graceffa was a New York Times bestseller. [6]
Laudanum is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight. Laudanum is prepared by dissolving extracts from the opium poppy in alcohol (ethanol).
Brandon Carl Vedas, also known by his nickname ripper on IRC, was an American computer enthusiast, recreational drug user and member of the Shroomery.org community who died of a multiple drug overdose while discussing what he was doing via chat and webcam. His death led to debate about the responsibilities and roles of online communities in life-threatening situations.
Corey Ian Haim was a Canadian actor. He starred in a number of 1980s films, such as Silver Bullet (1985), Murphy's Romance (1985), Lucas (1986), License to Drive (1988) and Dream a Little Dream (1989). His role alongside Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys (1987) made him a household name. Known as The Two Coreys, the duo became 1980s icons and appeared together in seven films, later starring in the A&E American reality show The Two Coreys.
Mitchell David Albom is an American author, journalist, and musician. As of 2021, books he had authored had sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition for sports writing in his early career, he turned to writing inspirational stories and themes—a preeminent early one being Tuesdays with Morrie—themes that now weave their way through his books, plays, and films and stageplays.
Drug diversion is a medical and legal concept involving the transfer of any legally prescribed controlled substance from the individual for whom it was prescribed to another person for any illicit use. The definition varies slightly among different jurisdictions, but the transfer of a controlled substance alone usually does not constitute a diversion, since certain controlled substances that are prescribed to a child are intended to be administered by an adult, as directed by a medical professional. The term comes from the "diverting" of the drugs from their original licit medical purpose. In some jurisdictions, drug diversion programs are available to first time offenders of diversion drug laws, which "divert" offenders from the criminal justice system to a program of education and rehabilitation.
Christopher Kennedy Lawford was an American author, actor, and activist. He was a member of the prominent Kennedy family, and son of English actor Peter Lawford and Patricia "Pat" Kennedy Lawford, who was a sister of President John F. Kennedy. He graduated from Tufts University in 1977 and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Boston College in 1983. He later earned a master's certificate in Clinical Psychology from Harvard University and was a lecturer on drug addiction.
Matthew Colin Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. A former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, he is the author of several books, former co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast, and publisher of the Racket News on Substack.
Hydrocodone/paracetamol is the combination of the pain medications hydrocodone and paracetamol (acetaminophen). It is used to treat moderate to severe pain. It is taken by mouth. Recreational use is common in the United States.
David Sheff is an American author of the books Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy, Game Over, The Buddhist on Death Row and All We Are Saying: The Last Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He also writes for magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Wired, Rolling Stone and other publications.
Sidney Manuel Wolfe was an American physician and the co-founder and director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, a consumer and health advocacy lobbying organization. He publicly crusaded against many pharmaceutical drugs, which he believed to be a danger to public health.
James Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie is a Scottish newspaper columnist, author, broadcaster, commentator, and former policy adviser to Michael Forsyth when he was Secretary of State for Scotland.
Katherine Ellison is an American author. With two colleagues, she won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their work reporting on corruption in the Philippines.
Stephen Fried is an American investigative journalist, non-fiction author, essayist and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (Pocket), a biography of model Gia Carangi and her era, was published in 1993. He has since written Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs , an investigation of medication safety and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex; The New Rabbi , which weaves the dramatic search for a new religious leader at one of the nation's most influential houses of worship with a meditation on the author's Jewish upbringing; Husbandry , a collection of essays on marriage and men; and Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time(Bantam 2010), the bestselling biography of restaurant and hotel entrepreneur Fred Harvey. In 2015, he co-authored the New York Times bestseller A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction with Congressman Patrick Kennedy.
A pill mill is an illegal facility that resembles a regular pain clinic, but regularly prescribes painkillers (narcotics) without sufficient medical history, physical examination, diagnosis, medical monitoring, or documentation. Clients of these facilities usually receive prescriptions only against cash. Pill mills contribute to the opioid epidemic in the United States and are the subject of a number of legislative initiatives at the state level.
Anthony J. Curcio is an American author, public speaker, convicted robber, and former career criminal. In 2008, Curcio was responsible for one of the most elaborately planned armored car heists in U.S. history. He was eventually arrested and sentenced to six years in federal prison. Upon his release from prison, he parlayed his criminal career into becoming a motivational speaker, in the field of drug abuse and crime prevention, speaking to students and athletes across the U.S.
In the United States, the opioid epidemic is an extensive, ongoing overuse of opioid medications, both from medical prescriptions and illegal sources. The epidemic began in the United States in the late 1990s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), when opioids were increasingly prescribed for pain management, resulting in a rise in overall opioid use throughout subsequent years. The great majority of Americans who use prescription opioids do not believe that they are misusing them.
Richard Stephen Sackler is an American billionaire businessman and physician who was the chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, a former company best known as the developer of OxyContin, whose connection to the opioid epidemic in the United States was the subject of multiple lawsuits and fines, and that filed for bankruptcy in 2019. It has been claimed that Richard Sackler's Purdue is among ”the worst drug dealers in history” and the Sackler family have been described as the "most evil family in America". The company's downfall was the subject of the 2021 Hulu series Dopesick and the 2023 Netflix series Painkiller.
The opioid epidemic, also referred to as the opioid crisis, is the rapid increase in the overuse, misuse/abuse, and overdose deaths attributed either in part or in whole to the class of drugs called opiates/opioids since the 1990s. It includes the significant medical, social, psychological, demographic and economic consequences of the medical, non-medical, and recreational abuse of these medications.
Christopher Paul George, called Chris George is an American drug dealer and convicted felon. Together with his twin brother Jeffrey Frank George and other parties involved, he ran several pill mills in Florida, which contributed to the opioid epidemic in the USA. George was sentenced to 17.5 years imprisonment in 2012 for these and other crimes. The media called him Pill Mill Kingpin, because he was the owner of the largest network of such clinics in Florida between February 2008 and March 2010.
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