Dr. Frank Fisher
A Northern California physician jailed for five months on murder charges for the way he treated pain patients. He was ultimately exonerated. A warning of just how far the crackdown was willing to reach.
Investigations & Reports
We don't just tell patients' stories. We follow the system failing them: the doctors targeted for treating pain, the exposes, and the myths worth breaking.
Doctors and the system
Treat pain, and you can become a target. These are the cases.
Dr. Forest Tennant
One of the country's foremost pain specialists, raided by the DEA in November 2017. No criminal charges against him were ever reported, but the raid pushed him into retirement and left his most complex patients scrambling for care.
Dr. David Bockoff
The DEA suspended his authority to prescribe pain medication in November 2022 and revoked it in 2025. Within weeks of the suspension, several of his patients, including Danny and Gretchen Elliott and Jessica Fujimaki, were lost. No criminal charges against him have been reported.
In memory of those lost
Dr. Rajendra Bothra
Charged in a $464 million "pill mill" case, the Detroit pain physician spent roughly three and a half years jailed before trial. In June 2022, a jury acquitted him and the three other doctors tried with him on all counts.
U.S. DOJ
The Carlstar Group
A tire manufacturer paid $300,000 to settle an EEOC lawsuit alleging it sidelined or fired workers for lawfully taking prescribed medication, even after they were medically cleared to do their jobs. The crackdown reaches the workplace, too.
U.S. EEOC
Exposes
The "alternatives" sold as safer than medication, and what they actually cost.
Spinal cord stimulators
A UCSF-led study of more than 1,000 patients found roughly 1 in 5 had the device removed or revised within two years. Among about 4,000 device types the FDA tracks, these implants have drawn the third-highest number of adverse event reports, even as they are pushed as an "alternative" to medication.
UCSF study
Arachnoiditis: Helen Bertelli
After an epidural steroid injection in 2011, Helen was diagnosed with arachnoiditis, an incurable and agonizing nerve condition. A hard caution about procedures marketed as safer than pills.
Arachnoiditis: Gary Snook
A Montana contractor whose life was upended after a series of epidural steroid injections gave him adhesive arachnoiditis, a severe and incurable inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the spinal cord and nerves. Rather than disappear, he carried his story to an FDA advisory panel to warn others about the procedure.
Explainers
The facts, in plain language, so you can see how the machine really works.
Dependence vs. addiction
The movement's cornerstone. Physical dependence, where your body needs a medicine to function, is not addiction, which is compulsive use that wrecks your life. Confusing the two is the root of nearly all of this harm.
Know your rights at work
What the law actually protects when it comes to disclosing your medication to an employer, and what it doesn't.
Paid to withhold pain meds
How "opioid stewardship" incentives can quietly pressure doctors away from treating pain, and reward them for it.
The DEA shortage
Valid prescriptions turned away and pharmacies left out of stock, as the DEA cut production quotas for key pain medicines nearly every year.
Media and culture
How the story gets told, who gets it wrong, and who gets it right.
Hollywood makes patients into addicts
Anchored on House M.D. and a 2022 Canadian Journal of Pain study of how films portray pain patients: how screen stories quietly rewrite legitimate pain patients as addicts, and why that stigma sticks to real people.
Canadian Journal of Pain, 2022
The one that got it right
"Pain Warriors" (2020), the documentary by Tina Petrova and Eugene Weis that told the story honestly, featuring an 11-year-old with cancer pain and Dr. Mark Ibsen.
Meet the Sacklers
A satirical song built entirely on verified Purdue and Sackler facts. Sometimes the sharpest way to tell the truth is to sing it.
A tribute to Claudia Merandi
Honoring a co-founder of The Doctor Patient Forum and the Don't Punish Pain movement, who has fought for pain patients when few others would.
Every case here is drawn from documented, sourced reporting. Where a claim rests on a court record or federal action, the source is marked.