There's Sick and Then There's Dopesick

Beth Macy's book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America puts a human face on addiction, recovery, prescription drug abuse, and the many paths that lead to heroin addiction-- the book pulls no punches and shows that culpability for the epidemic is myriad:

at the root is Purdue and their practices of unnecessarily flooding the market-- especially the rural market-- with millions of pills that put people in the throes of addiction;

our byzantine healthcare system that has no real plan on how to quell the epidemic;

the misguided notion that twelve step and twenty-eight day programs can realistically combat morphine addiction;

the ongoing and senseless debate about Medically Assisted Treatment-- some Puritanical folks don't think you should combat addiction with drugs, even though MAT is the option that works the best;

the places hit the worst are the places that were hit the worst by the crumbling economy, the places with the highest unemployment rates and the most physically demanding jobs;

Trump's public policy hasn't addressed the healthcare side of this issue;

the dopesickness;

etcetera . . .

Macy does not paint a pretty scene out in western Virginia, but her main point is that anyone can become addicted-- it's not the result of some deep-set character flaw that leads the lowest of the low into this life, these aren't the bottom feeders of society that would have succumbed to some other vice . . . opioid addicts can be the most successful, the most charming, the most professional people, but once they go down this road-- which four out of five times starts with prescribed medication-- then it is very difficult to turn back, and it will take all the resources of our families, communities, churches, temples, health care workers, doctors, drug companies, and government to turn the tide of opioid addiction-- the book is a must read, along with Sam Quinones Dreamland . . . while Quinones explains the big picture, the entire macro-system of how pills and heroin are distributed, Macy zooms in and details the individual lives affected by the crisis-- how the parents, families, and community leaders in the hot zone are fighting the drug companies, the healthcare system, and the morphine molecule, fighting on behalf of the addicted and the recovering, but mainly fighting for the overdosed and the dead.