Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America
This investigative nonfiction account traces the American opioid crisis from the spread of OxyContin outward into communities across the country. Through long reporting, it connects pharmaceutical marketing, failures in health care, social collapse, and the struggles of families and advocates confronting addiction.
Work Information
The story of a painkiller expands into a national crisis involving corporations, medicine, families, and entire communities.
Dopesick portrays one of the gravest drug crises in American history through a reported mosaic of people and institutions. It follows how a drug marketed as a breakthrough painkiller moved through prescriptions, sales incentives, trafficking, and systemic failure into local communities. The book is an indictment, but also a record of people caught in addiction and of citizens working toward recovery.
Review Summaries
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Japanese-language criticism values the force with which the book follows pain medication becoming a social crisis. By focusing not only on public figures but also on local families and affected people, it conveys the depth of the problem.
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Reader and bookseller response often highlights the depth of reporting and the strength of the human portraits. Although the subject is corporate responsibility and public policy, the pain of families and front-line responders carries the narrative.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Little, Brown and Company
- Published
- 2018-08-07
- Pages
- 384 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.19 x 3.18 x 24.45 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780316551243
- ISBN-10
- 0316551244
- Price
- 9089 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Health, Fitness & Dieting/Addiction & Recovery/Substance Abuse
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
Beth Macy is the author of the widely acclaimed and bestselling books Raising Lazarus, Truevine , and Factory Man . Based in Roanoke, Virginia, for three decades, she has won more than a dozen national awards for her reporting, including a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard. She is a winner of the 2021 George Mason Award. Beth is the creator of the Audible Original documentary Dopesick: Finding Tess . Dopesick is being adapted into an original drama by Hulu and will star Michael Keaton.
Reviews
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A painkiller killed America
This book helped me understand why Americans heavily depend on harmful opioid. I still remember I was shocked to see American people, whether young or old, buying a bunch of OTC/ prescribed painkiller medication like buying milk at Target. It was mid 1990s when I lived in a small college town of Midwest and just before OxyContin addiction emerged as a tragedy. Further, the recent announce by CDC shocked me again. Drug-overdose deaths in the US reached 93000, all-time high in 2020. The author Beth Macy explains the history of opioid addiction as well as geopolitical /sociopolitical causes of the prevalence so clearly that a reader like me, whose native language is not English could comprehend how and why too many deaths from substance abuse/ OD have been counted in the US. The book is not only for American parents raising kids in drug-friendly culture, but for anyone living with Western medicine, under which painkiller/mental illness medication is overrated and over-prescribed. No more death of young and bright Americans from OD.
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ダラダラと読みにくい
日本の病院では神経質なほど厳格に扱われている麻薬系鎮痛薬がアメリカでは同時代とは思えないほど違う衝撃のレポートです。掲載写真はなぜかどうでもいい関係者や遺族の家族のポートレートと街の風景。理系の内容を文系の人が書いた感じの読みにくさ。映画 シャープ オブジェクトの ティーンエージャーのパーティー（自宅）でお皿に山盛りのオキシコンチンが出てくるシーン、それだけ蔓延しているんですね。戦傷用の鎮痛薬の歴史、１９世紀のアメリカ南北戦争からベトナム戦争までを興味深く読みました。
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Great book
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Excellent
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I feel confident that this book could have been reduced by 50% - there are just so many individual stories, and a ton of names to keep track of - and whilst many are interesting in themselves, the connection to the overall red thread is sometimes a bit lost. Nevertheless, important investigative journalism that I am happy to have read.
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Relato real que dá uma dimensão do problema dos opióides nos USA
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I couldn’t put it down, I cried and felt every story. It should be compulsory reading in every high school.