Ripped from the headlines. Based on a true story. Inspired by real events. These are the phrases you hear when you watch viral hits like Netflix’s Painkiller or Hulu’s Dopesick. Is there any danger in writing stories like this?

Finding Inspiration

Inspiration. It’s delightful and absolutely unpredictable. You can find it anywhere, even during a visit to the mechanic where you happen to see a snarling dog come out of a barn (how Stephen King came up with Cujo). If you’re like Suzanne Collins (and most people), channel surfing and reading about current events is sure to get the brain churning too. A report on the Iraq war led her down the path to The Hunger Games.

Take Painkiller and Dopesick as examples. As the owners of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family spawned the opioid epidemic. They knew full well the addictive nature of their product. Still, they used manipulative practices and promotion of Oxycontin to put an unconscionable amount of opioids into the market. If that’s not story fodder, I don’t know what is.

The Reality

We can’t go down the Sackler rabbit hole without discussing the opioid epidemic. What makes their capitalistic greed so especially heinous is that they told people, healthcare providers and patients alike, that the drug was safe, that “the development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction” (a statement they referred to from a 1980 editorial letter — not a study — to The New England Journal of Medicine that was not based on actual research). Prescriptions followed, prescriptions everywhere. The inundation led to the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and has affected the lives of millions more.

When the opioid epidemic was declared in 2016, the backlash was fierce. Healthcare providers responded in kind, writing 45% fewer prescriptions by 2019. Unfortunately, the cat was already out of the bag. People who had become addicted to a drug that had been prescribed to them in the past were left to suffer. They sought alternatives. Spikes in heroin use followed and then came the spike in synthetic opioid use.

What’s worse, many street drugs today are laced with fentanyl, increasing the risk for overdose. It is horrific to realize that 60% of these drugs have potentially lethal amounts of fentanyl added to them. Many people are dying from opioids without knowing they even took one.

136 Americans
This is the number of Americans who die EVERY DAY from an opioid overdose. The number has been increasing year after year. Odds are you know someone who has died from one.

The Good and the Bad

The possible stories you could generate from this kind of horror are endless. So, is it okay to tell them? Yes and no. It all depends on how you frame it.

The Highlights

One thing about writing a story based on real events is that readers (and watchers) feel involved. They lived in a world where this (or something like it, depending on your rendering of events) took place. They have something at stake. It draws them in.

Add to that the empathy factor. Especially with Painkiller and Dopesick, most everyone knows someone (or someone who knows someone) who has suffered from addiction. A recent study shows that as many as 3 in 10 adults has had an addiction to opioids themselves or has had a family member with opioid addiction. When a reader can relate to a story, they are more invested in it. They want to see the “what ifs” play out. They want to feel something.

The Dangers

A lot of people watched Painkiller and Dopesick and assumed what they saw was fact. Many of them may have realized parts of it were dramatized (I mean, there WERE disclaimers), but the depictions of the Sackler family and their business must surely have been the parts founded in reality, right? Ummm, I am not so sure about Richard Sackler chatting up his dead uncle Arthur.

The truth is you have to be careful. Stories based on real people can put you at risk for litigation through defamation laws (libel is defamation in writing, slander is defamation by word of mouth). These suits don’t happen often for works of fiction but they do happen. The burden of proof is on the defendant but if they can show that harm was done to their reputation, you could find yourself in trouble.

What You Can Do to Protect Yourself

I am not saying you should not write stories based on real events. I am not saying you should not write stories based on real people either. Just know what you are getting yourself into.

I am not a lawyer and these are not hard and fast rules by any means. They are not foolproof. Still, you should at least consider the following:

1. Disclaimers. Make sure people know your story is not 100% true. Even adding the phrase “A Novel” on your book cover can potentially act as a disclaimer. Better yet, add a full disclaimer in the preface of your book.
2. Get permission: If you are using someone’s name or likeness, you may want to consider getting their permission if something you write could be in any way inflammatory. This may not always be possible. That said, if you are writing a memoir about people in your life, it is probably your safest bet to reach out to them first.
3. Composites. Don’t make it all about one person. Sometimes you can blend multiple real people into one character, like Painkiller did with their character Edie Flowers. She was made up of the many investigators who tried to take down Purdue Pharma. Composite characters make it harder for someone to say that damage was done to their personal reputation.
4. Believability. If you make part of your story so ridiculous or off the wall it couldn’t possibly be true, it is harder to say the story is really defaming someone. This approach points out that the story is clearly fabricated and is not mean to be taken seriously. Is that why Richard Sackler hallucinates his dead uncle in Painkiller? Perhaps.

Did You Know?
Did you know that defamation suits can only be brought for people who are alive? It explains why so many works of fiction are based on historical figures.

Whether your story reaches 10 people or 10 million, it will leave an impression. Remember that what you say has impact.

Bustamante J. Drug Overdose Death Statistics: Opioids, Fentanyl & More. (2023). NCDAS. https://drugabusestatistics.org/drug-overdose-deaths/

DEA Laboratory Testing Reveals that 6 out of 10 Fentanyl-Laced Fake Prescription Pills Now Contain a Potentially Lethal Dose of Fentanyl. (2022). Drug Enforcement Administration. https://www.dea.gov/alert/dea-laboratory-testing-reveals-6-out-10-fentanyl-laced-fake-prescription-pills-now-contain

Defamation Law Made Simple. (2011). www.nolo.com. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-law-made-simple-29718.html

Friedman J, Shover CL. Charting the fourth wave: Geographic, temporal, race/ethnicity and demographic trends in polysubstance fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States, 2010–2021. Addiction. Published online September 13, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16318

KFF Tracking Poll July 2023: Substance Use Crisis And Accessing Treatment. (2023). KFF. https://www.kff.org/other/poll-finding/kff-tracking-poll-july-2023-substance-use-crisis-and-accessing-treatment/

Porter J, Jick H. Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics. The New England Journal of Medicine. 1980;302(2):123-123. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm198001103020221

The Drug Overdose Epidemic: Behind the Numbers. (2023). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/data/index.html

Understanding the Opioid Overdose Epidemic. (2023). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/epidemic.html

U.S. Opioid Dispensing Rate Maps. (2023). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html