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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
informative
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
This was one of the dullest, worst-written books I’ve ever read. If you’re reading this review and want to learn about the topic, read Empire of Pain instead.
The author tries to weave together 2 stories - one about the Xalisco drug gangs, one about the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceuticals, interspersed with sad stories of dying drug addicts. The problem is, it fails at this. The book reads like 30 long-form articles which have been pasted together in a random order, meaning there’s a huge amount of repetition of key ideas, even within the same story. I feel like I’m being told the same thing 20 times with 5 different examples.
It all really falls apart in the afterward. The author decides to start ranting about the theories from “The Coddling of the American Mind”, a well-debunked book, and how a straight line can be drawn between opiate use and not riding a bike enough as a child and needing trigger warnings about racism - essentially completely negating his (and the widely accepted) original theory of pharmaceutical marketing being responsible, and leaving a question as to how the previous wave of opiate addicts came to be. Other highlights in the book include: a long description of the shutting down of a municipal swimming pool, describing two politicians as being “like French resistance fighters” before passing a bill with unanimous support(?), and pages on the outsourcing of the American shoelace industry. The author seems to think that anything that happened in a small Ohio town is relevant to the book because a lot of opiate addicts lived there.
Another issue is the sheer number of people in the book. Almost everyone has their full name printed, even if they only have the most tangential relation to the story. There’s also very little clarification as to who anyone is after the first mention of their name, and together these two factors make the book almost impossible to follow at times. You never know which names you need to memorise and which are pointless chaff.
I finished this book, purely out of stubbornness, but I think it might be the worst-written book I’ve ever read in my life. If you’re interested in the topic, I implore you to read something else - anything else.
Here and there I catch an article about "the opioid epidemic" but (to my knowledge) it hasn't directly affected me/those I'm close to, so I honestly never paid close attention. This book is absolutely fascinating and draws together all of the various factors that over a very short period of time (~25 years) has led to such a massive problem. It seems like literally the perfect shitstorm of big pharma, black tar heroin, a brilliant (and terrifying) drug marketing and sales strategy, a declining economy, and legitimate medical attention to the concept of pain (especially chronic pain). This book was one of Nicholas Kristof's recommended readings, so I knew it would be good, but I didn't expect to be as shocked and invested as I now am.
This book was fantastic! Not only did I gain knowledge about this epidemic, but I also learned how I can help address this issue in my community and in my home. I loved how this book shared a lot of data, but felt like I was reading a story. A lot of public health books fail to make the story engaging while also sharing data, but this was not one of those books. This is such an important book that I recommend everyone reads.
This book tells an important tale of two simultaneous phenomena that brought about the nationwide opioid epidemic. However, the tone of the book is incredibly stigmatizing throughout—from use of the word “junkies” to overemphasis on people (rightfully) using Medicaid to pay for their prescriptions. Quinones consistently refers to drug users as junkies throughout the book, which to any advocate of/person who works with drug users knows is absolutely harmful and stigmatizing. While he briefly touched on the role of Purdue Pharma in lighting the match that sparked the epidemic, the tone throughout the book suggests that despite pill mills and overprescribing, it was on the drug users themselves whether they became addicted or not. The book was eye opening and told the stories of various parties impacted by the epidemic, but the stigmatizing tone throughout weakened its potential further advocate for people who use drugs.
After reading multiple books about opioids and addiction over the past year or so, I was interested in understanding more about how opioids got to the area where I currently live. This book took a very meandering and informative path to describe the intersection of Oxycontin and black tar heroin in Ohio. Well-researched, thorough, and informative book that is a great complement to Empire of Pain (which mostly focuses on the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma's role in this crisis).
2018 PopSugar reading challenge: a book about a problem facing society today
I read Hillbilly Elegy after hearing commentators insist that it explained Trump voters - I was disappointed. This book does a much better job of explaining the desperation of many in the U.S. The sections on the Mexican drug trade were very interesting but vary considerably from the press coverage I've seen. I don't think the violence is imaginary.