Bill Buckley TV - Play for Today: Edna, the Inebriate Woman TV - Essex Boys 2000 - Bonded by Blood 2010 - Shifty 2008 - The Matrix 1999 - Norma Jean & Marilyn 1996 - The Independent - Vanguard TV - Hillbilly Heroin TV - Malcolm Muggeridge 1962 - Horizon TV - Jacques Peretti - Drugs Inc TV - Leonard Cohen TV - Margaret Atwood - Les Dawson - Tim Dyson - Sylvia Plath - George Carlin - Michael Mosley TV - Warning: This Drug May Kill TV - Heroin Explosion TV - The Fifth Estate: Time Bomb: Oxycontin 2013 - Drugs Map of Britain TV - The Long Firm 2004 - Dirty Money 2018 - Take Your Pills 2018 - Side Effects 2013 - Zoe Williams TV - Prescription Thugs 2015 - Nazis on Drugs: Hitler & the Blitzkrieg TV - Bitter Pill: Primodos TV - Crime of the Century TV - Panorama: Kids on Pills TV - USA Today article - Rise of the Footsoldier: Marbella 2019 - Take Your Pills: Xanax 2022 -
If I had a pill which would reduce my age by twenty-five years I wouldn’t take it. Because I’m tired of life. Bill Buckley, Best of Enemies ***** 2015
Everybody wants pills, dear. Play for Today: Edna, the Inebriate Woman starring Patricia Hayes, psychiatric inmate to Edna. BBC 1971
Pills is where’s the money’s really at. Essex Boys 2000 starring Sean Bean & Charlie Creed-Miles & Alex Kingston & Tom Wilkinson & Larry Lamb & Michael McKell & Holly Davidson & Terence Rigby et al, director Terry Winsor, gangsta in car
Why am I so fucking angry? ’Cause I can’t get that loving feeling no more. ’Cause the greedy bastard dealers won’t give me the pills to get the job done. Times change. Music changes. Drugs change. Summer of ’88: you ain’t never gonna get that again, mate. Bonded By Blood 2010 starring Tamer Hassan & Robert Fucilla & Vincent Regan & Terry Stone & Adam Deacon & Neil Maskell & Dave Legano & Johnny Palmiero & Duncan Meadows et al, director Sacha Bennett, Craig in car
You used to knock out pills, didn’t ya? Shifty 2008 starring Riz Ahmed & Daniel Mays & Jason Flemyng & Nitin Ganatra & Heronimo Sehmi & Francesca Annis & Jay Simpson & Danielle Brent & Kate Groombridge & Ben Drew et al, director Eran Creevy, dealer to Shifty’s mate
You take the blue pill – the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. The Matrix 1999 starring Keanu Reeves & Laurence Fishburne & Carrie-Anne Moss & Hugo Weaving & Joe Pantoliano & Gloria Foster & Marcus Chong & Julian Arahanga & Matt Doran & Belinda McClory et al, directors Andy & Lana Wachowski
Nembutals – I can’t seem to get to sleep without them any more. And these are Benzedrine. Norma Jean and Marilyn 1996 starring Ashley Judd & Mira Sorvino & Josh Charles & Ron Rifkin & David Dukes & Peter Dobson & Taylor Nichols & John Rubinstein & Allan Corduner & Lindsay Crouse & Dennis Bowen et al, director Tim Fywell
They make me alive again. ibid.
Sometimes I open ’em up and I let the granules dissolve on my tongue like communion. But mostly I mix it with stuff. ibid.
373: That’s the average number of painkillers we each take in a year. Is it too many? Doctors say yes. They fear the nation is becoming addicted to pills sold over the counter, with many people taking six every time they feel ill. The Independent (Health & Family), article Steve Bloomfield 20th November 2005
Massachusetts is now reeling from a new drug epidemic borne from another. Oxycontin is a national problem. But Oxy’s effect on the population of Massachusetts particularly its young people has been nothing short of devastating. Here Oxycontin has emerged as a gateway drug ... A state drowning in an endless stream of pills. Vanguard s5e1: Gateway to Heroin, Current TV 2011
Oxycodone – a highly addictive narcotic. ibid.
At sixty to eighty dollars per pill – the going black market rate around Boston – Frank’s habit was costing him $400 a day. He began to forge his father’s signature on cheques. ibid.
The truth is Oxycodone, the active ingredient in the painkillers ... is little more than a synthetic form of heroin. ibid.
Pills are now widely abused here more than cocaine, ecstasy and meth combined. ibid.
Doctors in Florida are responsible for prescribing 85% of all the Oxy in the US. ibid.
Pills have become a street drug – brought and sold just the same as cocaine and heroin. ibid.
But the story of the celebrity overdose overshadows a much larger issue. In the United States more people are now abusing prescription medication than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy combined. The drug of choice for a growing number of users is Oxycodone, a synthetic opiate ... It’s basically heroin made in a lab. Hillbilly Heroin
In Florida some pain clinics are known to dispense medication more than others. ibid.
Some clinics have been set up just to cater to pill addicts. ibid.
Florida has become the pain-killer capital of the US. Of all the Oxycodone dispensed by doctors in the whole country 85% of it comes from Florida. With the abundance of pills the state is seeing a new type of Tourism. ibid.
I will lift mine eyes unto the pills. Almost everyone takes them, from the humble aspirin to the multi-coloured, king-sized three-deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soothe you all in one. It is an age of pills. Malcolm Muggeridge, 1962
Over the course of your lifetime you are likely to be prescribed more than 14,000 pills. Tiny little spheres of crushed power with almost magical effects. Pills that will possibly save and extend your life by decades. These miraculous pills offer as much to serendipity as to science. Horizon: Pill Poppers, BBC 2010
By the time you are in your seventies you will probably be taking at least five tablets a day. ibid.
At the time there was no oral treatment for erectile dysfunction. No-one even really knew what caused the problem. But suddenly Pfizer had a potential treatment on their hands. ibid.
Pills and sex can be a lucrative combination. But sometimes drug companies are not the first people to see that. In the UK one third of all women of reproductive age take the contraceptive pill. Worldwide a hundred million rely on it. But it almost never reached the market. In the 1950s research into contraception was illegal in many parts of the world. And where it was legal, pharmaceutical firms feared a moral backlash. Despite this, independent researchers did discover how to synthetically create female hormones ... The result was a social revolution. ibid.
Despite how dangerous pills can be we still love them. ibid.
Every year the NHS spends over £400 million on painkillers. And as a nation we swallow almost 5 billion over the counter capsules. But to what extent is it the chemicals in here [points to capsule] that provide relief and to what extent is it what’s going on up here [points to head]? Horizon: Dr Michael Mosley, The Placebo Experiment: Can Me Brain Cure My Body? BBC 2018
New research shows the placebo effect is much more than wishful thinking: our brains can produce their own painkilling chemicals, which can be more powerful than you’d ever imagine. ibid.
‘There’s a lot of evidence that white and blue pills seem to have a greater analgesic effect.’ ibid.
Could you use the placebo effect to change something which is non-medical? Could you for example use it to cure a broken heart? ibid.
It doesn’t work for everyone. ibid.
The dream of a pill that makes us thin has been with us for years. Jacques Peretti, The Men Who Made Us Thin II, BBC 2013
It’s called Pharmageddon. A hidden public health catastrophe caused by America’s addiction to prescription painkillers. Pill popping mums are creating addicts before they are even born. Drugs Inc s2e6: Pill Nation, National Geographic 2012
America is hooked and Britain could be going the same way. ibid.
Dealing in painkillers is a hugely profitable business. ibid.
Oxycodone or Hydrocodone: two opioids synthesised from raw opium. ibid.
Snorting or injecting the crushed up pills triggers a huge release of natural endorphins. ibid.
More Americans are addicted to prescription painkillers than heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine combined. ibid.
The American prescription painkiller epidemic is so widespread addicts and dealers don’t need to go to Mexico to get their fix from dodgy doctors. ibid.
Spurious pain clinics, known as pill mills, are set up to provide painkillers to the paying public. ibid.
Florida’s pill mills feed an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse across America. ibid.
In the drugs game every pill popped, pipe smoked and shot injected comes with a price tag. Drugs Inc s4e13: Best in the Business, 2013
Abuse of prescription pills has created a whole new generation of heroin addicts. Drugs Inc s5e9: The High Wire, 2014
Thailand … For some, an elicit playground … An addiction epidemic: a little Meth pill called Yaba. Causes madness and misery. The death penalty hangs over every dealer, but the gangs push on. Drugs Inc s7e19: Bangkok Ice, 2015