Dopesick

Dopesick

Adult nonfiction
"Drug overdose had already taken the lives of 300,000 Americans
over the past fifteen years, and experts now predicted that 300,000
more would die in only the next five. It is now the leading cause of
death for Americans under the age of fifty, killing more people than
guns or car accidents, at a rate higher than the HIV epidemic at its
peak.
The rate of casualties is so unprecedented that it's almost
impossible to look at the total number dead--and at the doctors and
mothers and teachers and foster parents who survive them--and not
wonder why the nation's response has been so slow in coming and so
impotently executed when it finally did."
If you're wondering along those lines, Beth Macy's Dopesick:
Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company That Addicted America is a must
read. In this thoroughy researched volume Macy traces the trajectory
of the opiod addiction epidemic from 1996 when Purdue Pharma began the
widespread distribution and promotion of OxyContin, capitilizing of
the then prevalent idea that pain was criminally undertreated, through
the spread of the drug from impoverished Appalachian hamlets to
suburbia, to the mess we're currently in, where Maine's first woman
governor addressed the problem in her inauguration speech this week.
Macy points to a number of clues.
1) Rather than the scruffy dealers and criminal syndicates we
associate with the tragedy of drug addiction, the culprit was a major
pharmaceutical company with deep pockets and a stable of lawyers. The
intermediaries were the legions of physicians Perdue seduced through a
wide range of gifts including luxury vacations. The converted doctors
prescribed liberal amounts of drugs. Most people don't question
doctors' decisions. Many folks started a journey to Hell on Earth
with a routine trip to a doctor or a dentist. Any attempts to remedy
the situation were crushed by corporate lawyers.
2) The first victims were the impoverished residents of hard
scrabble mountain towns. Until the crisis spread to suburban high
schools, the crisis wasn't visible to much of America.
3) America has a punitive, rather than rehabilitative, stance
when it comes to drugs. We invest in prisons rather than treatment.
Dopesick is highly informative and eminently readable. Many of
the victims and their families are people Macy knows intimately and
cares deeply about. The people readers get to know are a lot like us
and our kids. If you care about the current drug epidemic and realize
there are no easy solutions--we can't imprison or DARE our way out--
Dopesick is a must read.
On a personal note, when my kids were a lot younger I had a
conversation with the father of an addict that I could never forget.
His only child was out there, turning tricks to afford drugs. He
could not go to bed secure that he wouldn't get a call from a
hospital, jail, or morgue. I was so fortunate that my kids grew up
clean. In fact as an EMT my son brings people who have overdosed back
from the brink.
Actually I'm the one in the family who had the narcotics
vulnerability. I had three children by c section at a time when
morphine seemed to be given to surgical patients like trick or treat
candy. The nurses didn't like this. They urged me to get off it as
fast as possible to prevent addiction. I did each time.
My other close encounter involved oral surgery. The doctor
wanted to send me home with a bottle of strong opiates. My response
was "No way in Hell." I wasn't knowledgeable or virtuous. I was
pregnant and not about to take anything that might harm my unborn
baby. We argued until I said, "Give me the damn prescription. That
way we just waste a piece of paper." I made do with Tylenol regular
strength. Thanks, Adam!
A great big shout out goes out to all the brave and generous souls who
battle the epidemic and work valiently to save and rehabilitate its
victims.
jules hathaway



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