The PAIN GAME is a hard-hitting, immersive multimedia project from Quarter Turn Media that challenges the standard narrative around pain, addiction, and opioids by exposing who has a stake in that narrative and why. In the works since 2004, the project investigates a sequence of high-profile criminal prosecutions of medical professionals for healthcare fraud and illegal prescribing, raising the question of why the U.S. Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration stood on their heads to convict these individuals while leaving more dubious actors untouched. It also covers various events that wrap around the cases, documenting the formation of an embattled community of chronic pain patients and the physicians, attorneys, advocates, experts, and officials who banded together to try to protect them.
Because we have been pursuing this story for so long we’ve seen its characters develop and its action interweave itself, with themes recurring, events rhyming, and conclusions beginning to emerge.
The PAIN GAME tells the story of America’s overdose crisis as it unfolded in real time.
Through time-traveling video pieces interlinked with print reporting and audio interviews, The PAIN GAME tells the story of America’s overdose crisis as it unfolded in real time, starting at the beginning and working from the inside out: from inside the pain community, through the healthcare and criminal justice systems, and out to American society at large. The result is a sprawling — yet surprisingly coherent — investigative history that speaks to our current political moment in unexpected ways.
The U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. (2004)
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