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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
This book felt repetitive like a lot of the other reviews seem to mention but it was interesting so it kept me reading. I even felt like the second half of the book was more interesting than the first. But, I don't understand a 345 page book on the opiate epidemic that includes some discussion on treatment never mentioning evidence based medication-assisted treatment. Leaving that out of the discussion, called the entire book into question for me. I left the book feeling like I couldn't trust the other parts of the books either not knowing what else was intentionally left out if something so obvious wasn't addressed. It bothered me because the style of the book seems like serious investigative journalism and doesn't appear to be too biased. I think this book will add to the stigma around medication-assisted treatment since nearly every mention of methadone is to mention the drivers going to methadone clinics for customers. The reference I see to it as treatment refers to it as an "addict-maintenance drug." I think the book will add to the stigma that chronic pain patients face. The book talks about drug courts, AA/NA, "tough love", and long term inpatient rehabs and implies they are the answers without ever questioning their effectiveness.
I’m almost finished and my mouth is still ajar. We know where they are growing this heroin in Mexico, but we aren’t doing a joint US/Mexican spraying of the poppy fields to kill it. We know Oxy is just like heroin, but we still have it on the market, plus all the new synthetic opioids, like Tramadol. Meanwhile, overdoses are the number one cause of accidental death in the US. The wildest part of the book was reading about how everyone shoplifted from the Portsmouth, Ohio Wal-Mart, and the workers didn’t care because the Walton family paid them too little to mess with addicts.
I had become almost convinced the talk about the UN’s Agenda 21 wasn’t true, until I read this book. If you can figure out a reason the government is letting this happen besides planned genocide, tell me.
I had become almost convinced the talk about the UN’s Agenda 21 wasn’t true, until I read this book. If you can figure out a reason the government is letting this happen besides planned genocide, tell me.
A good book but I felt like I got a lot of the information from his interviews. That's not going to knock my rating down so I'd still recommend it.
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
An unfortunately excellent book. Sam Quinones does an masterful job of telling the story of the opioid epidemic through a series of narratives, which makes for an episodic scene-by-scene of the gradual takeover of heroin, but also shows how interconnected various factors/parties were (and continue to be). Being more aware of the end of the opioid epidemic as it hit middle-class America and being privy to high-schooler drug dealers, it was fascinating and eye-opening to get a more historical understanding of the connection between heroin and prescribed opioids, especially as the epidemic started in smaller-town America.
However, despite being well interviewed and researched, there were parts of the book that felt lengthy or like rehashings of an earlier chapter/content. I also wish that there was more focus besides a chapter on how communities were working together to come out of the opioid crisis, with perhaps more suggestions on what community-building entails and common-man solutions. I actually found the afterword to be really fascinating and wish that he had an actual chapter like it in the book (talking about heroin might be a metaphor for talking about America generally), though I didn’t love that it seems like Quinones connects the avoiding of pain/seeking of pleasure as a way to criticize trigger warnings and “decreased student resilience” (without also talking about how the scale of current events and the state of the world might be increasing “emotional crises over the problems of everyday life.”)
Overall an informative and gripping read, and definitely a great starting point to learning more about the opioid crisis.
However, despite being well interviewed and researched, there were parts of the book that felt lengthy or like rehashings of an earlier chapter/content. I also wish that there was more focus besides a chapter on how communities were working together to come out of the opioid crisis, with perhaps more suggestions on what community-building entails and common-man solutions. I actually found the afterword to be really fascinating and wish that he had an actual chapter like it in the book (talking about heroin might be a metaphor for talking about America generally), though I didn’t love that it seems like Quinones connects the avoiding of pain/seeking of pleasure as a way to criticize trigger warnings and “decreased student resilience” (without also talking about how the scale of current events and the state of the world might be increasing “emotional crises over the problems of everyday life.”)
Overall an informative and gripping read, and definitely a great starting point to learning more about the opioid crisis.
This book is the most well-written book I have read since David Halberstam. The author’s ability to tell the stories of dozens of people and weave them together into a compelling narrative is extremely impressive. I can’t wait to read the follow-up.
A story about the opioid crisis from just before Covid. Depressing stuff at end-stage capitalism. We are in the societal cannibalizing phase of American history these days and the pharma-induced opioid epidemic is exhibit A.
This book is terrifying and the information is devastating. So many social, cultural, political and business interests intertwined...so many lives lost.
Dreamland is a hugely insightful book on the history of the opiate epidemic in America. This book focuses on the facts, and is heavily laced with stories and anecdotes of families and individuals affected by the epidemic, as well as doctors, scientists, lawyers, and politicians involved in the spread and mitigation of prescription pills, and of the Mexican individuals involved in the spread of Black Tar heroin in the US.
The book tackles this subject from two concurrent angles. It describes the phenomenon that drove heroin into the US from Mexico: poor young men from small Mexican towns who wanted to prove their worth and make a name for themselves back home. They started out as small independent business ventures, never using violence or threats, and only carrying small amounts of the drug on them, so as to avoid imprisonment and theft. As they were all related and from the same town, the Mexicans created a vast decentralized network of drug trafficking and trade, which quickly spread into the drug vacuum of the Midwest and Appalachia. This demand was strengthened by the growing prevalence of strong prescription pain pills, which Quinones describes as the other phenomenon that grew and contributed to this epidemic. A revolution in pain management occurred among doctors in the 70s and 80s, as they started to believe that opiates could be administered in a way that was not addictive. Thus OxyContin was borne, and it began to spread widely and rapidly throughout the US. "Pill mills" sprung up in the Midwest especially, when there were no regulations around the ability to prescribe these pills. However, users of the pills quickly grew dependent on them, and often upgraded to heroin, as it was becoming more and more available at ever cheaper prices thanks to the free-market nature of the Mexican drug trade.
This book will open your eyes to the epidemic in America. While it follows a fairly chronological order and bounces between the prescription pills and the Mexican trade quite frequently, it sometimes seems a bit scattered, as the stories and anecdotes lace around between one another. It became difficult to keep all the names and players straight in my head, but I don't think that's the point.
When you get to the end of the book, perhaps the most poignant reflections on all of this come in the last few pages of the afterword, where the author reflects back on what this opiate epidemic says about Americans, isolated and materialistic, living in the 21st century.
The book tackles this subject from two concurrent angles. It describes the phenomenon that drove heroin into the US from Mexico: poor young men from small Mexican towns who wanted to prove their worth and make a name for themselves back home. They started out as small independent business ventures, never using violence or threats, and only carrying small amounts of the drug on them, so as to avoid imprisonment and theft. As they were all related and from the same town, the Mexicans created a vast decentralized network of drug trafficking and trade, which quickly spread into the drug vacuum of the Midwest and Appalachia. This demand was strengthened by the growing prevalence of strong prescription pain pills, which Quinones describes as the other phenomenon that grew and contributed to this epidemic. A revolution in pain management occurred among doctors in the 70s and 80s, as they started to believe that opiates could be administered in a way that was not addictive. Thus OxyContin was borne, and it began to spread widely and rapidly throughout the US. "Pill mills" sprung up in the Midwest especially, when there were no regulations around the ability to prescribe these pills. However, users of the pills quickly grew dependent on them, and often upgraded to heroin, as it was becoming more and more available at ever cheaper prices thanks to the free-market nature of the Mexican drug trade.
This book will open your eyes to the epidemic in America. While it follows a fairly chronological order and bounces between the prescription pills and the Mexican trade quite frequently, it sometimes seems a bit scattered, as the stories and anecdotes lace around between one another. It became difficult to keep all the names and players straight in my head, but I don't think that's the point.
When you get to the end of the book, perhaps the most poignant reflections on all of this come in the last few pages of the afterword, where the author reflects back on what this opiate epidemic says about Americans, isolated and materialistic, living in the 21st century.
My rating is closer to a 3.5. The book is dense and somewhat repetitive. Quinones thoroughly researched the opioid epidemic and provides a strong history of the ties between Oxycodone and heroin usage across America. A worthwhile read on a timely topic.