Fentanyl of the People: What the Opioid Epidemic Can Teach Us About the Suffering Human Body Nikos A. Mylonas 1 1 School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University, UK. Correspondence address: nikolaos.mylonas@durham.ac.uk Nikos Mylonas is currently a PhD Student in Philosophy of Addiction at Durham University, UK. He studied Psychology (BSc) in the University of Crete, Greece and holds a MA degree in Social and Political Theory from University of Birmingham, UK. Abstract The present paper will attempt an examination of the US opioid epidemic in order to contribute to a theory of the living body in the 21 st century. Despite the ever- growing wave of academic and media reports regarding the increasing rates of overdose-episodes in USA (Hall, & Farrell, 2018) and the chronic pain crisis in Europe (Bosetti, et al., 2018) the issue has rarely been examined from a sociological and philosophical point of view. Starting from a brief discussion of the extraordinary attributes of recent opioid consumption (extremely potent substances, Suzuki, & El-Haddad, 2017; increased availability, Kunnumpurath, 2018; etc.) it will be shown why a theoretical understanding of the opioid epidemic is necessary. The main argument proposed is that the opioid epidemic should, firstly, be conceptualized as an aspect of long and intense addictification processes of Western societies (Loose, 2015) inherently related with transformations in the economical, technological and psychosocial spheres. Secondly, drawing: a) from the work of the French philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler (2011) who describes late capitalist democracies as sociétés addictogènes, b) the argument put forward by Bruce K. Alexander (2008) that addiction can be attributed to generalized ‘social dislocation’ and recent scientific research on the environmental aetiology of substance-use disorders, it is suggested that the US opioid epidemic could be investigated as a psychosocial pathology of the relationship human beings develop with their bodies and their social environment. In this regard the conceptualization of health proposed by Georges Canguilhem will be used in order to approach opioid addiction from a perspective that is not limited by the increasingly evident