Dopesick Characters

Colton Banks is the son of Drenna Banks and a young opioid addict who dies during what would have been his last hurrah before a stint in rehab. His death shocks the local community and helps his friend Christopher Waldrop find the motivation to break his addiction.

Debbie Honaker is a mother from a county in Virginia near where Dr. Art Van Zee works. She is one of many Virginia residents who is prescribed heavy painkillers after routine surgery and who suddenly ends up an addict, having a near-death experience and going to jail.

Crystal Street is a patient at the same addiction clinic as Debbie Honaker, and the two have similar life stories. Addiction runs in her family—her octogenarian father is addicted to Dilaudid and sells prescription pills from his nursing home bed.

Eddie Bisch is the son of Ed Bisch. His death (by fatal opioid overdose) inspires his father to create the website OxyKills.com, where families of OxyContin victims gather to share their stories.

Randy Nuss is an 18-year-old boy from Philadelphia who dies of an opioid overdose and whose death inspires his mother, Lee Nuss, to become an activist against OxyContin and Purdue Pharma.

Patrick is the 24-year-old son of Barbara Van Rooyan. His death of an opioid overdose motivates his mother to become an active critic of the FDA and its role in approving OxyContin.

Gregg Wood is the chief fraud investigator at the office of John L. Brownlee. Wood builds such a thorough archive of Purdue Pharma’s various misdeeds that he needs to rent space at a local strip mall to store all the files.

Lisa Green is the daughter of Fayne McCauley. She remembers her father’s many attempts at rehab before his eventual death in October 2009.

Randy Ramseyer and Rick Mountcastle are the U.S. attorneys who lead the 2005 case against Purdue Pharma for its role in creating the opioid crisis. Although they like the spotlight less than John L. Brownlee, they have a history of getting convictions against overprescribing doctors.

Jamey Singleton and Marc Lamarre are meteorologists in Beth Macy’s hometown of Roanoke, Virginia. When news breaks that both of them are major opioid users, it causes a sensation in the local news, marking a transition between the opioid epidemic’s stealth early phase and more open later phases.

Clifton “Lite” Lee is a heroin dealer from Philadelphia who helps popularize the drug in Roanoke, Virginia.

Laura Hadden is the mother of Brandon Perullo. She tries to use her son’s opioid addiction to draw more attention to the issue, but many of the people she reaches out to just ignore her.

Brian is a member of the same Hidden Valley, Virginia, group of opioid users as Spencer Mumpower. While in recovery, he agrees to tell his story to Beth Macy.

Devon Gray is a key distributor for heroin dealer Ronnie “D.C.” Jones. Gray’s arrest at a routine traffic stop helps lead to the later arrest of Jones.

Kareem Shaw is another major dealer in the same Woodstock, Virginia, heroin ring as Ronnie “D.C.” Jones. He is arrested after Jones, but unlike Jones, he agrees to cooperate with the police and gets a lighter sentence as a result.

Marie is a user-dealer associated with Ronnie “D.C.” Jones who gives the police enough information for them to arrest Jones.

Ashlyn is a young mother from the suburbs of Roanoke, Virginia, who gets addicted to opioids through OxyContin and who finds she can take vast quantities of heroin without overdosing. She turns to selling to fund her habit and gets sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in a federal women’s prison.

Bobby is the son of Janine, and his death of a fentanyl overdose inspires her to join Chris Perkins’s Hope Initiative as the executive director.

Rosemary Hopkins is a Virginia OxyContin addict and a patient of Van Zee’s who believes that the pain killer is part of a government conspiracy to deliberately get rid of “low lifes.”

Bryan Stevenson is the author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Macy interviews him to better understand the case of Ronnie “D.C.” Jones, and he helps explain unfairness in the U.S. criminal justice system, particularly the challenges that former prisoners face once they’re free.

The mother of Scott. She is unable to help her son get off drugs, and he dies of a heroin overdose.