...a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference ... The further Macy wades into the wreckage of addiction, the more damning her indictment becomes ... Macy introduces so many remarkable people that, midway through Dopesick, readers may find it challenging to keep track of them. (Imagine the writer as the literary equivalent of a triage doctor, with more patients to stabilize than she can linger on.) Taken as a whole, however, this gripping book is a feat of reporting, research and synthesis.
This exhaustively reported book includes many heartbreaking examples of young lives lost to drugs, sometimes so suddenly that parents had been unaware of the problem, sometimes after repeated efforts to help a child get clean in rehabilitation facilities or treatment programs. Although Macy’s stories are set in Virginia, they could happen anywhere in the United States. Most compelling are the characters she was able to follow over time ... Tess’s struggles to stay off drugs and become a fit mother provide a moving counterpoint to Macy’s discussion of the controversies that roil our national debate over addiction treatment.
Dopesick touches on these political developments, but its emphasis lies elsewhere. Macy’s strengths as a reporter are on full display when she talks to people, gaining the trust of chastened users, grieving families, exhausted medical workers and even a convicted heroin dealer ... There’s a great deal in Dopesick that’s incredibly bleak ... Macy suggests [ending America's opioid crisis] will require a profound transformation of how we understand who we are in relation to one another.
Despite her fidelity to the conventional narratives—poor white despair, evil Big Pharma—what emerges from Macy’s detailed account is a radically different view of the opioid epidemic. Where the factories and mines have closed down and the safety net, after years of budget cutting, is in tatters, selling drugs is a way to get by. You can clear a few grand a month as a low-level distributor, even more if you don’t dip into the product yourself ... But it has been much harder to see when the unemployed in question are white. The simple truth doesn’t sit well with us: today, even for white people, selling drugs pays better than working. Even Macy has a hard time grasping this fact, perhaps because of the curious racial bias that deforms her narrative. Other than Purdue Pharma, the only figures on whom she specifically pins responsibility for overdose deaths in the region are two black heroin dealers ... What comes through most clearly from Dopesica is that we have to undo the vast transfer of wealth from poor and middle-class Americans to the rich.
Dopesick is no doubt the hardest book that award-winning journalist Beth Macy (Truevine, Factory Man) has written, and it left this reviewer in tears ... It’s a heart-wrenching and thorough treatise on the national crisis that everyone knows about, but few deeply understand ... Macy addresses a wealth of complex issues in her engaging, spitfire prose ... Macy is a masterful storyteller, and Dopesick is full of unforgettable stories, including those of policemen, caregivers, prosecutors and a dope dealer named Ronnie Jones ... Dopesick is a moving, must-read analysis of a national crisis.
[A] timely investigative report ... Macy follows [Oxycontin] through the range of problems it has caused, the people it has hurt, the difficulties in fighting it (with plenty of too little, too late) and the glimmers of hope that remain.
[An] impressive feat of journalism, monumental in scope and urgent in its implications ... As Macy compellingly demonstrates, history tends to repeat itself.
You've probably heard pieces of this story before, but in Dopesick we get something original: a page-turning explanation ... she brings a new level of nuance and humanity to a story that has been splashed across headlines for years. (I won’t spoil the jaw-dropping ending.) She also gives us a sense of where things are headed. Medical students are no longer taught that pain is a vital sign—the field is moving toward brain scans to measure discomfort—and a new generation of doctors is learning to focus on mobility and quality of life over complete eradication of pain.
...devastating calls to action that affirm the galvanizing power of pointed, human storytelling ... a definitive attempt at confronting the epidemic, from its source to its current scale ... Macy is a terrific reporter, scrupulous in detailing the significance of her findings. She hits the big established points ... For those coming into Dopesick already aware of the basics, then, it can read a little too familiar. And while each number Macy cites in the book (and there are many) indicates horror and urgency, certain sections are overstuffed with figures ... But fortunately, Macy’s heart is with the people. Dopesick’s second section — filled with gut-wrenchingly candid interviews with addicts and their families — is the most essential.
Dopesick is threaded through with similar stories of loss and bewilderment: sad stories told by grieving parents and siblings, angry stories told by activists, and stoical stories told by police officers and local representatives who have witnessed entire communities laid waste by addiction ... Dopesick is also an in-depth exposure of corporate greed and regulatory failure ... Shifting effortlessly between the sociopolitical and the personal, Macy weaves a complex tale that unfolds with all the pace of a thriller.
Why did it take so long for the nation to wake up to the opioid epidemic? Why did it happen in the first place? These questions are at the core of Beth Macy’s Dopesick ... As a resident of Roanoke, Va., and a former reporter for the Roanoke Times, Ms. Macy focuses on southern and western Virginia, though the lessons of her narrative apply broadly ... Like many journalists, Ms. Macy writes about the tenacity of addiction as if it were a purely physiological process. 'Nothing’s more powerful than the morphine molecule,' she writes and refers elsewhere to a 'morphine-hijacked brain.' She paints drug withdrawal, or 'dopesickness,' as the primary engine of sustained use. One begins to wonder: How could anyone ever stop using?
Combining her sharp journalistic skills with deep research, Macy dissects all of these causes and their ensuing disastrous effects, giving Dopesick ambitious scope ... While the statistics are jarring, it is in conveying the epidemic’s human toll that Macy excels. She spends hours with addicts, dealers, law enforcement agents, and grieving mothers ... Still, the conviction that Macy expresses at the outset—that 'until we understand how we reached this place, America will remain a country where getting addicted is far easier than securing treatment'—lends the book its urgency ... Dopesick is compassionate and humane.
Luckily we have Beth Macy’s Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America to tell us the in-depth story of the opioid crisis in modern America ... a detailed history of the opioid crisis in America ... Macy describes in excruciating detail how Oxycontin crept into poorer communities in Appalachia as early as 1999, when mortality rates began to spike ... Macy is able to develop an intimacy with key individuals that allows her to understand and explain the heartfelt feelings of her characters.
...a book that is a scorching indictment of American greed and indifference ... Macy reports on the human carnage with respect and quiet compassion, but it is gut-check reading.
Although the realities are devastating, the doctors, the bereaved, and the advocates Macy introduces do offer hope. Hers is a crucial and many-faceted look at a still-unfolding national crisis, making this a timely and necessary read.
[A] hard and heartbreaking look at the cradle of the opioid addiction crisis ... Macy potently mixes statistics and hard data with tragic stories of individual sufferers, as well as those who love and attempt to treat them ... Macy’s forceful and comprehensive overview makes clear the scale and complexity of America’s opioid crisis.
Harrowing travels through the land of the hypermedicated, courtesy of hopelessness, poverty, and large pharmaceutical companies ... An urgent, eye-opening look at a problem that promises to grow much worse in the face of inaction and indifference.
