This chapter analyzes the significant transformation in media narratives during the opioid crisis of the twenty-first century, contrasting them with earlier coverage of the heroin epidemic. Drawing from content and discourse analysis, it explores how White, middle-class opioid users were frequently depicted as victims of a flawed healthcare system, corporate malpractice, and systemic oversight, while earlier heroin users—largely Black and Latino—were criminalized and dehumanized. The chapter demonstrates how terminology, imagery, and source selection shifted toward empathyEmpathy framing, framing addictionAddiction framing as a public health emergency rather than a moral failing. It also investigates how social media introduced new spaces for storytellingStorytelling trends, recovery, and harm reductionHarm reduction, while also posing risks of misinformation and echo chambers. Through a comparative lens, the chapter reveals the racial and socio-economic double standards embedded in addiction coverage and calls attention to the power of media framing in shaping public perception, policy response, and collective memory. Ultimately, it argues that while the opioid narrative marks progress toward compassion, it also exposes enduring inequities in who receives that compassionCompassion shift and whose suffering is ignored.