Pain Hustlers

Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup

By: Evan Hughes

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

The inside story of a band of entrepreneurial upstarts who made millions selling painkillers—until their scheme unraveled, putting them at the center of a landmark criminal trial. • THE BASIS FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE PAIN HUSTLERS STARRING EMILY BLUNT AND CHRIS EVANS

"Unfolds with the velocity and verve of a Scorsese film…A tour de force."—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing

John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. It was the early 2000s, a boom time for painkillers, and he developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.

Kapoor, a brilliant immigrant scientist with relentless business instincts, was eager to make the most of his innovation. He gathered around him an ambitious group of young lieutenants. His head of sales—an unstable and unmanageable leader, but a genius of persuasion—built a team willing to pull every lever to close a sale, going so far as to recruit an exotic dancer ready to scrape her way up. They zeroed in on the eccentric and suspect doctors receptive to their methods. Employees at headquarters did their part by deceiving insurance companies. The drug was a niche product, approved only for cancer patients in dire condition, but the company’s leadership pushed it more widely, and together they turned Insys into a Wall Street sensation.

But several insiders reached their breaking point and blew the whistle. They sparked a sprawling investigation that would lead to a dramatic courtroom battle, breaking new ground in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable in the spread of addictive opioids.

In Pain Hustlers, National Magazine Award–finalist Evan Hughes lays bare the pharma playbook. He draws on unprecedented access to insiders of the Insys saga, from top executives to foot soldiers, from the patients and staff of far-flung clinics to the Boston investigators who treated the case as a drug-trafficking conspiracy, flipping cooperators and closing in on the key players.

With colorful characters and true suspense, Pain Hustlers offers a bracing look not just at Insys, but at how opioids are sold at the point they first enter the national bloodstream—in the doctor’s office.

©2023 Evan Hughes (P)2023 Random House Audio

Great insight!

This is a phenomenal telling of an astounding story. It is eye opening and shocking.

Captivating

The Hard Sell is a fascinating (and upsetting) story deftly told! I’ve heard so much about the opioid crisis over the years, but apart from manufacturing highly addictive drugs, I’ve never understood the extent of the role pharma companies play, or how companies target irresponsible doctors. The author does a great job unpacking all the layers of corruption.

Just ok

This was interesting - but doesn’t compare to more scandalous stories like Empire of Pain and Bad Blood. I did learn a lot about fentanyl sprays and certainly the leaders of this company were selfish and greedy but there wasn’t a lot of nuance or thrilling scandal in this book.