Dopesick

It's not you, it's me.

This is an incredibly well-written, incredibly important book. Unfortunately, I keep putting it down for far too long at a time and end up lost when I pick it back up. I may try a readthrough again at some point, but I need to put this away for now and focus on something else. Regardless, I will be recommending this to many people and may grab a physical copy myself.

What a fascinating book. It has the dubious honour of being the first book I ever put on my “Didn't finish” shelf not because I didn't like it but because it was, in some ways too good.

Too scary, infuriating, upsetting and anxiety inducing for me to continue with. It's also, really sad. I do volunteer work regularly with many folks who are addicted and of course that's upsetting and stressful. (But I'm glad I can help) but reading this just put this at the top of my mind all the time.

But readers better at dealing with this than I will enjoy this I think.

I am so glad that I was able to listen to this book. It was incredibly insightful and heart wrenching in the struggles the addicted face.

5 stars for the content. I knew there was an opioid epidemic, but didn't know anything about how it started, how it progressed, and how slow finding a solution (and agreeing to any solutions!) has been. A good overview, and also how did I not know how bad this is in my neck of the woods?! Macy kept naming places and I was like, oh yep, I've been there, oh, I know where that is...

The writing was a little disjointed and repetitive, and it took me a bit to figure out how we'd jumped from OxyContin over-prescribing to heroin dealing, but I think where it really shines is in the human element - in the interviews with parents who have lost their teenaged and young adult children to overdose deaths; in conversations with doctors in Virginia counties who saw the problem coming from a mile away, tried to fight it from the pharma-rep all the way up, and how hard they've still been trying to get their patients appropriate help after more than 20 years; and in the text messages with addicted user-dealers, some who want desperately to stay clean, and some who never quite manage it. Macy excels at putting human faces and human stories front and center - they are, first and foremost, still people, not just addicts and dealers.

Outstanding journalism, storytelling and history.

Strong depiction of the current opioid crisis from several angles - the pharmaceutical company that introduced OxyContin and lied about its addictive qualities, the law enforcement personnel who know that every time they arrest a big-time dealer another is waiting to take his place, the treatment providers who are underfunded and overwhelmed, the parents who try to do the right thing and most of all the individuals who are addicted. Macy does a good job at making them sympathetic (for the most part), and the ones who don't make it break your heart, but I wish she had tried a little harder to explain how the opioid addiction feels and why it so quickly and devastatingly takes over their lives. Also I did not realize that the geographic scope of the book was so narrow, focused almost exclusively on Roanoke and nearby southwestern Virginia communities without exploring how the epidemic has affected other parts of the country and how it looks different in urban areas.

Still, a very well-written, important book about a devastating problem that shows few signs of improving.