You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
[b:Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic|22529381|Dreamland The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic|Sam Quinones|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421965034s/22529381.jpg|41977045] is good, not great. Quinones does a nice job outlining the history of oxy-->heroin, and tells a fascinating story about the way Mexican heroin dealers operate. Unfortunately, the last 1/3 of the book gets a little slow and didn't keep my interest.
While I enjoyed it, on the whole, I would recommend [b:Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs|22245552|Chasing the Scream The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs|Johann Hari|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416448118s/22245552.jpg|41620487] as a better read on drug policy and its implications.
While I enjoyed it, on the whole, I would recommend [b:Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs|22245552|Chasing the Scream The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs|Johann Hari|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1416448118s/22245552.jpg|41620487] as a better read on drug policy and its implications.
This book had a lot of fascinating bits but was probably thirty percent longer than was strictly necessary. (How many times did he use the words "internet" or "pizza" when describing the distribution method used?).
Coming from rural Southern Ohio I've seen lots of friends from high school deal with opioid addiction, but I didn't know anything about the history of their growth in popularity or the interplay between OxyContin and heroin. Glad to have read the book, probably wouldn't be too quick to recommend it unless someone has a particular interest in drug abuse and the rust belt.
Coming from rural Southern Ohio I've seen lots of friends from high school deal with opioid addiction, but I didn't know anything about the history of their growth in popularity or the interplay between OxyContin and heroin. Glad to have read the book, probably wouldn't be too quick to recommend it unless someone has a particular interest in drug abuse and the rust belt.
The awesomeness of the content and thoroughness of the author's investigation of opiods made some of the repetitiveness (which surely could have been fixed by a good editor) worth it.
Interesting details on the rise of opioids and heroin and how the combo of pill mills and the Xalisco clan devastated the heartland of America. The author makes the pharmaceutical companies look worse then the heroin dealers but that may be true.... a bit cyclical and didn't offer answers to why people abused pain pills in the first place. I would have liked more interviews with ex addicts but good perspectives from parents, government officials, and drug dealers.
This was hard to read. Which is probably why it took so long for me to read it. The writing is often repetitive, but Quinones is really trying to drive home these overlapping cycles of the Opiate epidemic. There was the rise of the prescriptions pills, and the influx of Mexican black tar heroine. And of course, bad bad insurance companies that are less interested in care (even if it's cheaper in the long run), than they are the bottom line.
It's a complex set of problems. I don't know what the solution is, but I have hope we can find it together.
It's a complex set of problems. I don't know what the solution is, but I have hope we can find it together.
dude says the same things many times.
"All you had to do was suck off the timed-release coating ..."
2 stars
"All you had to do was suck off the timed-release coating ..."
2 stars
Quinones does an excellent job shepherding the reader through the economic forces that led to the explosion of both black tar heroin and Oxycontin, and the way they combined to create the opiate crisis.
I don't think I fully appreciate how totally debased the scientific standards were in pushing the idea that prescription opiates were not addictive. It's frankly pretty fucking appalling that we charged on through millennia of pretty irrefutable evidence on the addictive nature of opioids in an effort to believe we could cure chronic pain. It's a real testament to human ability to believe what we want so desperately to believe. But I really left this half of the book totally ashamed by the embarrassing failure of science and research and government regulation of prescription drug advertising.
Quinones has clear sympathy and admiration for the Nayarit drug cartels. These poor sugarcane farmers who come to America, working on a salary, delivering convenience and customer service with an excellent product. Theirs is a business model worthy of a case in my entrepreneurship class at HBS.
My main gripe: This book is a FULL 100 pages too long. A fair number of chapters literally repeat what sounds like exactly the same set of sentences and is certainly the same set of ideas. It feels like there was no editing, and Quinones just stitched together a bunch of old news articles in one place. The flow kind of works, but you're constantly taking two steps forward in the story and then circling back to a redundant point. By the end, I found this pretty frustrating and was not on board with all of Quinones preaching, but there was enough good research and necessary-information-to-be-an-informed-citizen to make this worthwhile.
I don't think I fully appreciate how totally debased the scientific standards were in pushing the idea that prescription opiates were not addictive. It's frankly pretty fucking appalling that we charged on through millennia of pretty irrefutable evidence on the addictive nature of opioids in an effort to believe we could cure chronic pain. It's a real testament to human ability to believe what we want so desperately to believe. But I really left this half of the book totally ashamed by the embarrassing failure of science and research and government regulation of prescription drug advertising.
Quinones has clear sympathy and admiration for the Nayarit drug cartels. These poor sugarcane farmers who come to America, working on a salary, delivering convenience and customer service with an excellent product. Theirs is a business model worthy of a case in my entrepreneurship class at HBS.
My main gripe: This book is a FULL 100 pages too long. A fair number of chapters literally repeat what sounds like exactly the same set of sentences and is certainly the same set of ideas. It feels like there was no editing, and Quinones just stitched together a bunch of old news articles in one place. The flow kind of works, but you're constantly taking two steps forward in the story and then circling back to a redundant point. By the end, I found this pretty frustrating and was not on board with all of Quinones preaching, but there was enough good research and necessary-information-to-be-an-informed-citizen to make this worthwhile.
dark
informative
sad
slow-paced
💠"Discussing [the morphine molecule], you could invoke some of humankind's greatest cultural creations and deepest questions: Faust, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, discussions on the fundamental nature of man and human behavior, of free will and slavery, of God and evolution."
Quinones has a good story to tell: "It was about America and Mexico, about addiction and marketing, about wealth and poverty, about happiness and how to achieve it." More specifically, he seeks to document a collision. On the one hand, opiate use increased due to aggressive marketing campaigns among Big Pharma that relied on a misreading of near non-existent research on addictive potential. On the other, would-be sugar cane workers from one far flung rancho in Nayarit, Mexico innovated a 21st century delivery model for black tar heroin that helped people across the country transition from prescription pills to a street drug. The author colors in broad outlines with reporting from a variety of US heartland cities and voices.
The second time through, I was exasperated; this doesn't seem to have aged well and instead reflects the appetite for #OpioidCrisis tales at the moment it was published. First of all, this feels written to skim and could have been half as long. Quinones is ridiculously repetitive: "Farm boys from Xalisco" making heroin delivery "like pizza" to addicts, or "slaves to a molecule." [I'm tired of "slave" beung misused as a supposedly meaning-making frame. "Chaotic" and "uncontrolled" is what he means - and not enslavement. Meanwhile, he calls slavery a large "influx of foreign-born labor."]
Quinones' diction reinforces normative power structures. Especially in the first half, he phrases women as possessed objects. He also makes unnecessary racial, ethnic and class asides that cast aspersion on everyone but WASPs.
Confused about how to discuss a public health problem within his crime beat, Quinones introduces a lot of police. He also glorifies policing as "making a difference" even as he describes the contrary. Nearly every city profiled features an officer although in their own words, they "have had no impact." By the end of the book, he's eagerly profiling activist parents, former addicts and trained fast food workers as effective crusaders against the national march of opiate death. Compared to earlier topics, he gives these mostly cursory treatment: one mention without much detail.
Quinones has a good story to tell: "It was about America and Mexico, about addiction and marketing, about wealth and poverty, about happiness and how to achieve it." More specifically, he seeks to document a collision. On the one hand, opiate use increased due to aggressive marketing campaigns among Big Pharma that relied on a misreading of near non-existent research on addictive potential. On the other, would-be sugar cane workers from one far flung rancho in Nayarit, Mexico innovated a 21st century delivery model for black tar heroin that helped people across the country transition from prescription pills to a street drug. The author colors in broad outlines with reporting from a variety of US heartland cities and voices.
The second time through, I was exasperated; this doesn't seem to have aged well and instead reflects the appetite for #OpioidCrisis tales at the moment it was published. First of all, this feels written to skim and could have been half as long. Quinones is ridiculously repetitive: "Farm boys from Xalisco" making heroin delivery "like pizza" to addicts, or "slaves to a molecule." [I'm tired of "slave" beung misused as a supposedly meaning-making frame. "Chaotic" and "uncontrolled" is what he means - and not enslavement. Meanwhile, he calls slavery a large "influx of foreign-born labor."]
Quinones' diction reinforces normative power structures. Especially in the first half, he phrases women as possessed objects. He also makes unnecessary racial, ethnic and class asides that cast aspersion on everyone but WASPs.
Confused about how to discuss a public health problem within his crime beat, Quinones introduces a lot of police. He also glorifies policing as "making a difference" even as he describes the contrary. Nearly every city profiled features an officer although in their own words, they "have had no impact." By the end of the book, he's eagerly profiling activist parents, former addicts and trained fast food workers as effective crusaders against the national march of opiate death. Compared to earlier topics, he gives these mostly cursory treatment: one mention without much detail.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced