OxyContin: How America Got Hooked On Legal Heroin (VIDEO)

The highly addictive painkiller OxyContin is the top selling branded drug in its category, raking in over a billion dollars last year. HuffPost Live hosted a discussion Tuesday about who takes responsibility when we get hooked on painkillers -- The addicts? The doctors prescribing the drugs? The pharmaceutical companies? -- and how many inadvertent addicts and deaths the drug is responsible for.

Frank Morris, a recovered addict from Brooklyn, New York, assesses that the healing effects of OxyContin can easily be exploited.

"The problem for me was that the company produced it in a way where I could actually freebase the pill," he shared. "The effect immediately hit a light switch in my brain and I couldn't stop."

Frank joined HuffPost Live host Janet Varney in a conversation about the addictive nature of OxyContin and other prescription drugs along with Dr. Lora Brown, a pain management physician and founder of Wake-Up-Now.org, Dr. Gregory Smith, the producer of the documentary American Addict, and Cindy Harney, a mother in Sarasota, Florida.

Watch the full segment at HuffPost Live.