NO MORE WALLS –
Mar. 18, 2026 – It started in 1998, with a pain in Ken Rideout’s ankle. A podiatrist gave him a prescription for seven Percocet, a drug containing the opioid oxycodone. Rideout was a high-flying commodity trader in New York, outwardly successful but racked with impostor syndrome. The Percocet dulled his foot pain – and also his anxiety. Rideout was used to alcohol and cocaine, but this was different. He felt happy, confident and optimistic.
He returned to the podiatrist for more pills. Then more. Soon he was altering the prescriptions manually, changing a seven into a two and adding a zero, before targeting smaller pharmacies that wouldn’t run verification checks.
A year after starting the pills, Rideout moved to London for work. This was an opportunity, he thought, for a clean break. But within a week he was suffering extreme withdrawal: depression, delirium from days of lost sleep, overwhelming flu-like symptoms. He called his younger brother and asked him to FedEx a batch of a new drug he had read about called OxyContin, which, depending on the dose, can contain a significantly higher amount of oxycodone per pill than Percocet. The OxyContin made Rideout feel amazing again. He found a private doctor who would prescribe the pills.
