I've just finished reading the Empire of Pain...

By TGrand8

This book lays out the Sacklers and how they ended up tied to the whole opioid crisis. It’s a lot, honestly. I did really like how Keefe goes through it step by step—how the different generations set things up, not just for pushing OxyContin, but also for the ways they responded once lawsuits started coming their way. It made it easier to see that the whole family is involved in some way, whether they were there before OxyContin, were actually part of the process, or just profited off it. What really bothered me was how it feels like they’re living in a completely different reality. The wealth is wild (and that’s saying something), but it’s more than that—their mindset, like they can’t or won’t connect their actions to the opioid mess we’re dealing with now. The compartmentalizing is kind of unreal. Maybe I’m just worn out from reading most of it over the holidays, but I kept catching myself thinking it would be nice if at least one of them had some kind of big, Dickens-style wake-up call and used their money to actually support treatment programs. But yeah, that’s not how it works—no haunting to scare them into seeing things, no consequences coming from above if they don’t straighten up.