American Pain is a shocking true crime documentary that follows the rise and fall of twin brothers who trafficked millions of dollars worth of opioid pills in the United States. As FBI agent Kurt McKenzie says at the start of the film, “The George brothers did not start the opioid crisis, but they sure as hell poured gasoline on the fire.”
As the boys grew up and started bodybuilding, Chris and Jeff also got into steroid use. This led to one of their first drug-selling enterprises. South Beach Rejuvenation was basically telemedicine for anabolic steroids. Eventually, Chris and Jeff’s business ideas took a different direction and they opened South Florida Pain and East Coast Pain. In these pain clinics, Chris and Jeff hired doctors to shell out prescriptions. One of the main drugs prescribed at the brother’s clinics is described as “Roxys” or “M-boxes”, otherwise known as Oxycodone, a highly addictive opioid painkiller. 
Friskey’s story is one of the most heartwrenching. His son Andy died of an overdose of oxycodone. Andy began taking the pills to cope with pain following a serious car accident. In the midst of the wild and outlandish details of the documentary, at times you forget just how many lives oxycodone destroyed. However, American Pain brings these details back to center stage. Many of the people interviewed who worked in the pill business were addicts themselves, with devastating consequences.
While American Pain is an excellent documentary with gripping testimony, it may have hit home just a little bit more if some of the victims and families affected by Chris and Jeff had their moment to speak. Instead, the film ends by interviewing Chris George himself — freshly released from an 11-year prison sentence and unwilling to accept any blame for the loss of lives in the opioid crisis.
