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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
WHAT I LIKED. The book is a wealth of information and research on the narcotics epidemic in the United States. It covers a massive swath of events (some of them rather incidental) that resulted in what we call the "opioid epidemic" and what ravaged not just urban megapolises but also the Heartland of America. Mr. Quinones takes a systematic look from many different angles and the volume of data and histories he collected for it is quite immense. Knowing virtually nothing about it, I learned a lot.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE. The Author's writing style is rather peculiar. First of all - it jumps around the storylines and timelines, a lot. While it is sometimes an effective writing device, in this particular case it makes the overall narration choppy and quite annoying. Surely, the book covered several narratives, but the way they were presented wasn't helpful.
Secondly, the narration gets quite repetitive - a lot, actually. There are probably more than a dozen of long passages where the Author elaborates again and again the technical details of the Xalisco Boys operation. Other storylines get the same treatment with multiple long recaps. This quickly loses novelty and makes the book quite dull to read. More than once I felt that each chapter was originally intended as a separate magazine article.
To sum it up, the topic is extremely interesting (and terrifying, actually) and I highly recommend the book. But you might struggle plodding through it.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE. The Author's writing style is rather peculiar. First of all - it jumps around the storylines and timelines, a lot. While it is sometimes an effective writing device, in this particular case it makes the overall narration choppy and quite annoying. Surely, the book covered several narratives, but the way they were presented wasn't helpful.
Secondly, the narration gets quite repetitive - a lot, actually. There are probably more than a dozen of long passages where the Author elaborates again and again the technical details of the Xalisco Boys operation. Other storylines get the same treatment with multiple long recaps. This quickly loses novelty and makes the book quite dull to read. More than once I felt that each chapter was originally intended as a separate magazine article.
To sum it up, the topic is extremely interesting (and terrifying, actually) and I highly recommend the book. But you might struggle plodding through it.
While I found this book fascinating and excellently researched, the organization left me confused. There were many repetitive vignettes that, while demonstrating the depth of Quinones research, did little to advance the narrative and themes of the book. Overall this is a must-read for anyone looking for an in-depth look at the causes of the present American opioid epidemic.
As an assistant prosecutor in a rural Ohio county that has been hit very hard by the opiate epidemic, I found this book very interesting, although the history of the Xalisco Boys doesn't really apply to my jurisdiction, as we rarely see black tar heroin (having prosecuted several hundred heroin cases, I can think of only one time that black tar heroin was present...we more typically see brown or white powder heroin).
While the part of me that yearns for a bigger sandbox found the discussions of the Xalisco Boys very interesting but ultimately irrelevant to my community's situation, the discussion about painkillers as the origination point of the current heroin crisis was fascinating. I have seen many (though not all) heroin addicts who started with painkillers...some due to chronic pain, but others because it was a drug that they could take and got addicted to. I've long recognized the role that OxyContin and other prescription opiates played in leading people to heroin, but I've never before read a history of how those drugs came to be so easy to get. If nothing else, Quinones' pulling back of that curtain is valuable in revealing how little doctors are able to know about all the different complaints we come to them with, and how much they depend on other specialists to inform them.
One thing that does tend to get lost in discussions about the heroin epidemic, though, is that many addicts are not simply addicts, they are criminals. They lie, cheat, and steal, and don't care who is hurt by that, or whether the pain they leave behind is physical, economic, or psychological. That comes from a mixture of inherent personality traits and constantly poisoning one's own body, which also poisons the mind; the exact mixture varies from person to person. I have seen addicts who have stolen from their parents, from their friends, from the last family members to give them a chance and a place to stay. That leaves a devastation behind that no amount of treatment can fix, without major reforms by the addict.
While the part of me that yearns for a bigger sandbox found the discussions of the Xalisco Boys very interesting but ultimately irrelevant to my community's situation, the discussion about painkillers as the origination point of the current heroin crisis was fascinating. I have seen many (though not all) heroin addicts who started with painkillers...some due to chronic pain, but others because it was a drug that they could take and got addicted to. I've long recognized the role that OxyContin and other prescription opiates played in leading people to heroin, but I've never before read a history of how those drugs came to be so easy to get. If nothing else, Quinones' pulling back of that curtain is valuable in revealing how little doctors are able to know about all the different complaints we come to them with, and how much they depend on other specialists to inform them.
One thing that does tend to get lost in discussions about the heroin epidemic, though, is that many addicts are not simply addicts, they are criminals. They lie, cheat, and steal, and don't care who is hurt by that, or whether the pain they leave behind is physical, economic, or psychological. That comes from a mixture of inherent personality traits and constantly poisoning one's own body, which also poisons the mind; the exact mixture varies from person to person. I have seen addicts who have stolen from their parents, from their friends, from the last family members to give them a chance and a place to stay. That leaves a devastation behind that no amount of treatment can fix, without major reforms by the addict.
Sam Quinones takes a fascinating topic that captures the interests of a reader and within those 520 pages he manages to bore him to death. Do you want to know that the boys from Xalisco were delivering heroin like pizzas? Well, here you will have a chance to learn about it in every other chapter.
The repetition and the constant explanations of the same things over and over again were just... boring. In the meantime, we never talked about i.e. why the Mexicans never touched heroin? I know that they were told not to take it. But how did they manage not to get addicted at all? This was never talked about. They were only referred to in regards to their poverty. Nothing else. I did not like that.
It seems that the author met a group of people in some facility and just described their lives. And I do not want to be brutal - but most of their stories were one and the same story. This book could be 300 pages, and have much more substance than it does now. Unfortunately, it is not as strong as the heroin the author is describing.
The repetition and the constant explanations of the same things over and over again were just... boring. In the meantime, we never talked about i.e. why the Mexicans never touched heroin? I know that they were told not to take it. But how did they manage not to get addicted at all? This was never talked about. They were only referred to in regards to their poverty. Nothing else. I did not like that.
It seems that the author met a group of people in some facility and just described their lives. And I do not want to be brutal - but most of their stories were one and the same story. This book could be 300 pages, and have much more substance than it does now. Unfortunately, it is not as strong as the heroin the author is describing.
Really, really well written by someone who clearly has a talent for this kind of work. Adds lots of helpful context to recent current events and challenges the reader to think through the issue broadly and compassionately. Very much enjoyed.
I came to this book with almost no knowledge of the opiate epidemic except for some scary statistics I'd heard on NPR. Reading Dreamland was a good way to get an idea of the situation from the beginning of the opiate crisis through the present day. It is an investigative journalistic piece about Quinones's research into all of the interwoven forces that combined to create the largest drug epidemic in American history.
Dreamland does a thorough job showing how two separate forces, heroin traffickers from Xalisco, Mexico, and Purdue Pharma and the rise of OxyContin, combine in dark synergy to form this unstoppable tidal wave of addiction and overdose deaths. It's interesting how both the Xalisco boys and the pharmaceutical industry were both only seizing the economic opportunities they saw available to them - and how greed is the underlying drive that has fueled the whole crisis. Quinones reminds us of the humanity of drug traffickers in his descriptions of the "pizza delivery" workers from Mexico, trying their best to provide for themselves and their families, yet still ultimately motivated by greed and the prospect of showing off back home. He takes less pains to humanize the actions of David Proctor and other corrupt pill mill doctors, but we still see parallels between the drug cell leaders and those docs who make money off of legal painkiller prescriptions. The book almost becomes a warning about human greed and the dangers of capitalism. I appreciated the uplifting ending, though, which pits community against greed and shows that sometimes, the better parts of human nature can still break through.
I found some parts of the book to be repetitive. Quinones needed to remind his readers several times about how the Xalisco drug cells worked only to add a few details each time. It might have been the format (I listened to this on audiobook), but I found myself nodding and saying "yes, yes, I know, please get on with it" through many of these expositions.
Overall, this was an interesting look at a topic I know far more about now than I had before reading. There are probably more thrillingly-written non-fiction books out there, but this one does its job well.
Dreamland does a thorough job showing how two separate forces, heroin traffickers from Xalisco, Mexico, and Purdue Pharma and the rise of OxyContin, combine in dark synergy to form this unstoppable tidal wave of addiction and overdose deaths. It's interesting how both the Xalisco boys and the pharmaceutical industry were both only seizing the economic opportunities they saw available to them - and how greed is the underlying drive that has fueled the whole crisis. Quinones reminds us of the humanity of drug traffickers in his descriptions of the "pizza delivery" workers from Mexico, trying their best to provide for themselves and their families, yet still ultimately motivated by greed and the prospect of showing off back home. He takes less pains to humanize the actions of David Proctor and other corrupt pill mill doctors, but we still see parallels between the drug cell leaders and those docs who make money off of legal painkiller prescriptions. The book almost becomes a warning about human greed and the dangers of capitalism. I appreciated the uplifting ending, though, which pits community against greed and shows that sometimes, the better parts of human nature can still break through.
I found some parts of the book to be repetitive. Quinones needed to remind his readers several times about how the Xalisco drug cells worked only to add a few details each time. It might have been the format (I listened to this on audiobook), but I found myself nodding and saying "yes, yes, I know, please get on with it" through many of these expositions.
Overall, this was an interesting look at a topic I know far more about now than I had before reading. There are probably more thrillingly-written non-fiction books out there, but this one does its job well.
In Dreamland, Sam Quinones weaves together the story of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin with the story of how black tar heroin appeared in the U.S: the result was the devastating opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 1 million lives.
Quinones's personality and beliefs were dominant in this work; I especially struggled with the amount of copaganda and Quinones's willingness to praise Republicans and conservatives. Which sucked, because Dreamland reveals a narrative that is both important and fascinating. I wish I'd gotten to learn about it from a journalist with more willingness to question the status quo and the role of the state, instead of enduring long paragraphs waxing poetic about some cop's backstory.
The space Quinones used to glorify the police and feds could have been used to discuss so many things: What are the attitudes in affected communities towards needle exchanges/harm reduction? What do insurance companies have to say about their role in the opioid epidemic? (Why didn't Quinones interview anyone from an insurance company? He brings them up quite often.) How has national-scale politics responded to the opioid crisis? What about bringing up the protests and sit-ins against Purdue Pharma? (This book was published in 2015, before the infamous 2019 'die-in' at the Guggenheim, but there were still protests against Purdue even back then!)
Dreamland tells a tragic story, but I wish it had gone deeper into the corruption that enabled the opiod crisis to occur, instead of heaping compliments onto politicians who would not have acted had it not affected their lily-white, rich towns.
Quinones's personality and beliefs were dominant in this work; I especially struggled with the amount of copaganda and Quinones's willingness to praise Republicans and conservatives. Which sucked, because Dreamland reveals a narrative that is both important and fascinating. I wish I'd gotten to learn about it from a journalist with more willingness to question the status quo and the role of the state, instead of enduring long paragraphs waxing poetic about some cop's backstory.
The space Quinones used to glorify the police and feds could have been used to discuss so many things: What are the attitudes in affected communities towards needle exchanges/harm reduction? What do insurance companies have to say about their role in the opioid epidemic? (Why didn't Quinones interview anyone from an insurance company? He brings them up quite often.) How has national-scale politics responded to the opioid crisis? What about bringing up the protests and sit-ins against Purdue Pharma? (This book was published in 2015, before the infamous 2019 'die-in' at the Guggenheim, but there were still protests against Purdue even back then!)
Dreamland tells a tragic story, but I wish it had gone deeper into the corruption that enabled the opiod crisis to occur, instead of heaping compliments onto politicians who would not have acted had it not affected their lily-white, rich towns.
informative
sad
slow-paced
Excellent, informative book on a devastating social crisis. I must confess, my own knowledge of the opioid crisis was pretty slim. Quinones provides an eye-opening and heart-wrenching look at the causes and extent of the opioid crisis and how prescription painkiller abuse intersected with black tar heroin. I did think the organizational structure was occasionally repetitive, but it didn't really bother me.
I found this book to be a fascinating read although admittedly repetitive. Quinones does a great job of researching the many factors that lead to today's opiate epidemic. I feel like this is a warning tale in so many respects because one of the big underlying causes was a media narrative that evolved that American medicine was under-treating pain supplemented by another journalistic faux pas that said opiates weren't as addictive as people thought. It didn't take much for some immoral executives to start pushing Oxycontin and creating a generation of addicts (white, suburban) that never existed before. The icing on the cake was that heroin traffickers discovered that if they delivered their goods like pizza, they'd make a lot more money and reach many new customers. All of these factors are explained in detail, and the details are interesting. I just wish Quinones had had a better editor. There's a lot of repetition in the book, and it wasn't necessary. His writing style is very accessible though, and honestly even if you only read the first half of the book, I think you'd get a lot out of it.