
The Power in Letting Go of Roseanne on 'The Conners'
In 1996, Purdue Pharma began a brilliantly coordinated, highly effective effort to market opioids to chronic pain sufferers. They trained doctors to tell patients that people with chronic pain could not become addicted to opioids. The calculus: to tap the vein of a wide-open, long-term revenue stream consisting of mainly middle-aged women with chronic pain conditions like osteoarthritis. This includes women like Roseanne Conner, who died of an opioid overdose on the first Roseanne Barr-free episode of ABC's The Conners.
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The drug that is killing thousands of Americans each year is complicated.


While we all abhor the racism that Roseanne Barr displayed and was fired for, I will always love this episode of the show she created.
When you are in pain, very little else matters until you get that pain addressed. When you are an addict, very little else matters until you get that addiction addressed. Maslow's hierarchy, a theory of human motivation used in psychology, should include a substratum for pain—physical and mental. While we all abhor the racism that Roseanne Barr displayed and was fired for, I will always love this episode of the show she created. Watching each member of the Conner family cope with their matriarch's death was a stark and visceral reminder of what my family could have gone through if Purdue had had its way.
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