Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
Andrew Macfarlane---SJR State College
Hey what’s up everyone this is Andrew! For my next post, I am going to be examining a topic that has been a heartbreaking issue for a while in our country. This is the opioid epidemic. In my last blog, I spoke about the life of Kurt Cobain. He began using opioids in the late 80s and early 1990s. He used heroin, bought from the streets. My next book talks about synthetic forms of heroin, specifically OxyContin, which has wreaked havoc across the nation. This week I will be discussing and reviewing Dopesick by Beth Macy.
As I continue, let me tell you that this book is not for everyone. The opioid epidemic has affected many Americans. It has caused pain and suffering not only for the people who became addicted, but for their friends and families as well. The epidemic has ensnared people as well as entire towns and sections of the country. I have had both friends and family members who have passed from battles with addiction to prescription medication. If you are triggered by scenes of drug use or descriptions of violence associated with drugs, please be careful.
Beth Macy tells this story as a reporter who has entrenched herself in a corner of northwestern Virginia. It is the heart of Appalachian country and ground zero for the opioid epidemic. She follows the everyday lives of Americans who have become caught up abusing opioids. As she tells their stories, she begins to weave a narrative together that tells how this epidemic came to be. She tells about older folks prescribed OxyContin for pain, high school football players who were prescribed it for injuries. How they were treated by doctors who had been told that this synthetic opioid was not addictive and was a “miracle drug” in the treatment of pain.
This of course was not the case. The drug, OxyContin, a powerful, man-made opioid was patented by Purdue Pharma- the company owned by the Sackler family. Macy then goes into how Oxycontin was pushed by Purdue and its representatives, and how the research into the drug was buried by the company, in favor of record sales and profits.
If you are interested, please read more for yourself. I did because I wanted to understand what addiction is like for these people. I have seen the pain myself, I wanted to understand how it began, and what is being done now to help our fellow humans out of this mess.
Dopesick by Beth Macy
ISBN: 0316551244
Publication Date: 2018-08-07
A Hulu limited series inspired by the New York Times bestselling book by Beth Macy. Journalist Beth Macy's definitive account of America's opioid epidemic "masterfully interlaces stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference" (New York Times) -- from the boardroom to the courtroom and into the living rooms of Americans. In this extraordinary work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of a national drama that has unfolded over two decades. From the labs and marketing departments of big pharma to local doctor's offices; wealthy suburbs to distressed small communities in Central Appalachia; from distant cities to once-idyllic farm towns; the spread of opioid addiction follows a tortuous trajectory that illustrates how this crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched. Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy sets out to answer a grieving mother's question-why her only son died-and comes away with a gripping, unputdownable story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy investigates the powerful forces that led America's doctors and patients to embrace a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death. Through unsparing, compelling, and unforgettably humane portraits of families and first responders determined to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows that one thing uniting Americans across geographic, partisan, and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But even in the midst of twin crises in drug abuse and healthcare, Macy finds reason to hope and ample signs of the spirit and tenacity that are helping the countless ordinary people ensnared by addiction build a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities. "An impressive feat of journalism, monumental in scope and urgent in its implications." -- Jennifer Latson, The Boston Globe
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
ISBN: 0385545681
Publication Date: 2021-04-13
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama--baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions--Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Empire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especially for pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm. Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives, and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury. Forty years later, Raymond's son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium--co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug's addictiveness--was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die. This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d'Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America's second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world's great fortunes.
Dopesick by
Empire of Pain by