American Pain

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

John Temple

* Finalist for the Edgar® Award in Best Fact Crime
* New York Post, “The Post’s Favorite Books of 2015”
* Suspense Magazine’s “Best True Crime Books of 2015”
* Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year in True Crime
* Publishers Weekly, Big Indie Book of Fall 2015

The king of the Florida pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like 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 muscle-heads 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 was the brainchild of Chris George, a 27-year-old convicted drug felon. The son of a South Florida home builder, Chris George grew up in ultra-rich Wellington, where Bill Gates, Springsteen, and Madonna kept houses. Thick-necked from weightlifting, he and his twin brother hung out with mobsters, invested in strip clubs, brawled with cops, and grinned for their mug shots. After the housing market stalled, a local doctor clued in the brothers to the burgeoning underground market for lightly regulated prescription painkillers. In Florida, pain clinics could dispense the meds, and no one tracked the patients. Seizing the opportunity, Chris George teamed up with the doctor, and word got out. Just two years later Chris had raked in $40 million, and 90 percent of the pills his doctors prescribed flowed north to feed the rest of the country’s insatiable narcotics addiction. Meanwhile, hundreds more pain clinics in the mold of American Pain had popped up in the Sunshine State, creating a gigantic new drug industry.

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 deadliest drug epidemic in American history. The narrative swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, and is populated by a gaudy and diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as 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.

Globe Pequot / Lyons Press

Pages: 304 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4930-2666-1 • Paperback • August 2016 • $16.95 • (£12.95)

978-1-4930-1959-5 • eBook • September 2015 • $15.99 • (£11.95)

Subjects: True Crime / White Collar Crime, History / United States / General

American Pain

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

Paperback

eBook

Summary

* Finalist for the Edgar® Award in Best Fact Crime
* New York Post, “The Post’s Favorite Books of 2015”
* Suspense Magazine’s “Best True Crime Books of 2015”
* Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year in True Crime
* Publishers Weekly, Big Indie Book of Fall 2015

The king of the Florida pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like 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 muscle-heads 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 was the brainchild of Chris George, a 27-year-old convicted drug felon. The son of a South Florida home builder, Chris George grew up in ultra-rich Wellington, where Bill Gates, Springsteen, and Madonna kept houses. Thick-necked from weightlifting, he and his twin brother hung out with mobsters, invested in strip clubs, brawled with cops, and grinned for their mug shots. After the housing market stalled, a local doctor clued in the brothers to the burgeoning underground market for lightly regulated prescription painkillers. In Florida, pain clinics could dispense the meds, and no one tracked the patients. Seizing the opportunity, Chris George teamed up with the doctor, and word got out. Just two years later Chris had raked in $40 million, and 90 percent of the pills his doctors prescribed flowed north to feed the rest of the country’s insatiable narcotics addiction. Meanwhile, hundreds more pain clinics in the mold of American Pain had popped up in the Sunshine State, creating a gigantic new drug industry.

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 deadliest drug epidemic in American history. The narrative swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, and is populated by a gaudy and diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as 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.

Details

Globe Pequot / Lyons Press

Pages: 304 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4930-2666-1 • Paperback • August 2016 • $16.95 • (£12.95)

978-1-4930-1959-5 • eBook • September 2015 • $15.99 • (£11.95)

Subjects: True Crime / White Collar Crime, History / United States / General

Author

John Temple is a professor of journalism at West Virginia University and the author of Deadhouse and The Last Lawyer, the latter of which won the Scribes Award given by the Society of Legal Writers. C-SPAN, the Washington Post, Raleigh News and Observer, and many other media outlets have covered him and his work, and before teaching he worked in newspapers for six years at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Greensboro News and Record, and the Tampa Tribune. Temple lives with his wife and two sons in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Reviews

“John Temple’s American Pain takes you on a hysterically funny, yet equally tragic, tour of Florida’s pill mill industry as the painkiller epidemic was reaching a fever pitch. He adeptly navigates the personal, political, and historical impacts of oxycodone, illustrating how the prescription opioid broke through all socioeconomic barriers to become the drug of choice for the super-rich and the super-poor. American Pain is a must-read for anyone trying to understand this government-sanctioned drug and the destructive power of Big Pharma.”
—Melisa Wallack, Oscar-nominated co-writer of Dallas Buyers Club
—

“American Pain made me angrier with every page. Why? Because John Temple has so adeptly reported this story of how a handful of criminals and shady doctors in Florida profited from the poverty and addiction of the Appalachian South. Right from the riveting opening chapter, American Pain is rife with tension, conflict, and good journalism. Temple sets up a collision course between the George twins and their buddy Derik against a lone FBI agent, who suddenly realizes she doesn’t exactly have the law on her side. Every chapter is worth it.”
—James Higdon, national bestselling author of The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate’s Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History
—

“John Temple’s American Pain is as addicting a read as the little pills he writes about. Temple details the brazen operations of some of America’s largest pill mills and how they thrived in plain sight for years before the government took action. Forget back-alley deals, smuggled contraband and elusive kingpins, today’s war on drugs pits the government against much more formidable foes: pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and ambitious businessmen eager to facilitate prescriptions for patients’ pain, whether real or imagined.”
—Jason Ryan, author of Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs
—

[Deadhouse gives] an insider’s view of one of the country’s most misunderstood professions.
— Charleston Gazette

Writing evenly and efficiently, [in Deadhouse] Temple will enlighten fans of the CSI television shows. Teens, especially fans of CSI and Mary Roach’s Stiff, will find the perspectives from two college-age interns particularly involving.
— Booklist

[Deadhouse is] fascinating … Temple invests his subjects with a warm humanity, providing insight into lives that are not nearly as glamorous as they appear in television dramas, but far more interesting.
— Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

American Pain

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

John Temple

American Pain

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

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