Alumnus Philip Eil ’11 To Publish True Crime Book About Opioid Epidemic

Prescription for Pain, a debut true crime book by Philip Eil ’11 will be published in April 2024 by Steerforth Press. 

In this investigative work about the American opioid epidemic, Eil examines the life of physician Paul Volkman, his father’s former med school classmate who is currently serving four life sentences in federal prison for his role in a “pill mill” scheme.

Volkman’s Ohio-based operation was tied to the overdose deaths of 13 people, though investigators have examined his association with 20 others. His pain clinics illegally disseminated vast quantities of opioid painkillers, making him the largest dispenser of oxycodone from 2003-2005. In that three-year span, Volkman’s scheme accepted only cash and employed armed guards. He remained in business despite family member complaints and law enforcement raids. 

Eil’s research process involved interviewing over 150 people, visiting 19 different states, consolidating information from 12 years of correspondence with Volkman himself, and filing a Freedom of Information Act suit against the DEA for nearly 20,000 pages of trial evidence. 

“My years as a Columbia MFA student—2009 to 2011—were essential to the project that became Prescription for Pain,” said Eil. “As I describe in the book, I first learned about my dad’s federally-indicted med-school classmate in early 2009, a few months before I arrived on campus. And I pursued the project with the knowledge that I was about to enroll in a program that would give me the space and support to tackle such an ambitious story.”

Prescription for Pain is available for pre-order here. 

Philip Eil is a freelance journalist based in Rhode Island and has taught in the Literary Arts and Studies Department at the Rhode Island School of Design as well as at Columbia University, UMass-Dartmouth, and Brown University. He previously worked as a news editor and staff writer at the alt-weekly paper, The Providence Phoenix, which closed in 2014. His journalistic work can be read in VICE, The Atlantic, The Nation, Boston Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Men’s Health.