#2026 - Peter Berg

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Peter Berg (0:14)

Good to see you, my friend.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

Your show is fantastic, it's really good, man. Painkiller on Netflix, can't recommend it enough. I'm only two episodes deep, I started the third today. It's so fucking good, dude. And it's so disturbing, because it's true. It's an accurate account of how this all happened.

It makes you so uncomfortable to think that there's people in the world that would do what the Sackler family did.

Peter Berg (0:44)

Do you know anyone who's gone down from opioids? Quite a few, quite a few people.

When they first came to me and asked me if I was interested, my buddy Eric Newman, who put the whole thing together, said, do you want to do something about the Sacklers? Do you know who the Sacklers are? And I did. I knew they were the family behind OxyContin. And he said, are you interested? And I started thinking and I started counting the people I know who've died or whose kids have died because of OxyContin and opioids. And I quickly got off of both fingers, you know? And then I started thinking about some of my heroes, my artistic heroes, Chris Cornell, Tom Petty. And one of my big heroes was Prince. I was a huge, huge Prince fan. I went to school in Minneapolis when he was coming up.

I was an extra in Purple Rain back in the day, you know, First Avenue in Minneapolis.

And those three guys, when Prince died, Prince was legendary for his work ethic and his lifestyle, no alcohol, no swearing, and just incredible work ethic. And the fact that OxyContin got him, and that really kind of fucked with me. So when they came to me and started talking to me about doing something about the Sacklers, I was like, yeah, I'm all in. And the more I dug into it and the more experts and writers who have been covering this epidemic for so long, the more I learned, you know, I'm not necessarily the biggest conspiracy guy of all time. I do, if the proof's there, I'm down. But the more I learned about the Sacklers and how they maneuvered what is essentially just heroin in like a little M&M pill, you know, how they were so artful and so good at manipulating the system, I was shocked and I was all in on Painkiller.

Joe Rogan (2:51)

Well, I'm glad you were all in because people need to know this story and a lot of people aren't going to watch a documentary and, you know, they're not going to read about it. This is a very entertaining show that shows accurately how this went down. And, you know, there's a moment, and I don't want to give too much away, but there's this one moment where this ethical doctor confronts this sales girl.

And that's a very, very, very powerful moment.

Peter Berg (3:16)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (3:17)

Because the ethical doctor who knows everything about opiates is essentially explaining to this very young girl, who's just a beautiful sales girl, that you're selling heroin.

This is heroin. It's indistinguishable to the body.

It's heroin. It's just you're calling it a different thing. And this idea that it's only 1% of the people who have problems with it is... Those numbers are all lies. All lies. They're always lies. They lie about how many people died. They lie about how many people get addicted. It's all a lie. And if they can keep lying and not face any repercussions, they'll keep lying because that's... They almost have an obligation to their shareholders to do that.

Peter Berg (4:03)

Yeah. And in this case, they didn't even have shareholders. It was a private company. It's crazy. Richard Sackler and his uncles were making all the money. They completely lied. I mean, they were doctors. And they knew how powerful the opioid dosage was. And what else is crazy is they knew that if they just kept...

They would make so much more money by what they call titrating up, right? So, you know, we put you on 10 milligrams of Oxycontin because you blew out your back in the gym.

And it works for a bit. And then when it doesn't, we're like, oh, well, we just got to...

We got to kick you up. So let's put you on 20 and then let's put you on 40 And they got up to 85 milligram Oxycontins. They called them Oxycoffins. That was the word on the street.

And these reps, these cute little reps, these pretty little college graduates who were just looking to make some money were paid bonuses based on the amount of milligrams in the pill. So I'm trying to convince you, if I'm a rep and you're a doctor, just to kick it up, Doc, prescribe 20 or 40 or 85 milligrams and everybody will make some more money. And that was the game that the Sacklers were playing. And like I've said, like, I'm down with capitalism. No problem. Like make money, do it. And if you just look at the Sacklers, you know, from a capitalistic perspective and you apply, you know, rules of capitalism and you're on their grade, they get an A+. They were fucking good at making money. You put like that much morality into the equation and these are some evil human beings.