Reviews - Riverside Public Library

AudioFile Reviews

In this razor-sharp indictment of the government, doctors, and Big Pharma, Beth Macy, author and narrator of this audiobook, exposes their attempts to control what is now an epidemic of opioid addiction among people of all walks of life in our nation. Doctors who do not understand the depth of the problem are overprescribing pain medications for small injuries and creating drug addicts in the process. Macy describes the many failed attempts to correct this in a tone that reflects her advocacy and caring as she reveals her findings. She strains to put a reporter's neutrality into her delivery, but her words reflect a reality that cancels her effort. Macy's pleas for change need to be heard. E.E.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Award-winning Virginia-based journalist Macy, author of best-sellers Factory Man (2014) and Truevine (2016), carefully constructs the through line from the midnineties introduction of the prescription painkiller OxyContin to the current U.S. opioid crisis: 300,000 deaths over the last 15 years, with that number predicted to double in the next 5. Its addictiveness initially far underreported, Oxy was outrageously marketed to doctors and overprescribed to patients, who quickly couldn't do without it. The much-later introduction of an abuse-resistant formula made heroin cheap and easily accessible, a natural next step. Macy's years of following the issue have earned her remarkable access to those suffering from opioid-addiction disorder as well as the people who tirelessly love and care for them and, in many cases, honor their memories. Again and again, she hears of the devotion the addicted claim to the drug, over every other aspect of their lives, and the motivating fear of "dopesickness," gutting withdrawal symptoms. And despite its proven long-term success, medication-assisted treatment remains stigmatized and often too difficult to access. 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. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.

BookPage Reviews

The damage done

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, August 2018

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. Macy spent six years following families affected by the opioid epidemic in and around her adopted hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, and she begins by noting that several interviewees died before she had time to transribe her interview notes. 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, such as the difficulties of rehab and disagreements about the benefits of 12-step programs versus medication-assisted treatment. 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.

Macy traces the origins of the crisis, which was perpetuated by Purdue Pharma, a company owned by one of the richest families in America. Purdue went from "selling earwax remover and laxatives to the most lucrative drug in the world"—prescription opioids they claimed were not addictive. As one Virginia lawyer aptly notes, "the victims were getting jail time instead of the people who caused it."

Dopesick is dedicated to the memory of 10 opioid victims. Their stories and those of their surviving families form the heart of this book. There's Jesse Bolstridge, a 19-year-old high school football star, and "blond and breezy" 21-year-old Scott Roth, who "looked like one of the Backstreet Boys." Macy herself wasn't immune to the heartache, admitting that there "were times that journalistic boundaries blurred," especially when it came to the lively and likable young mother Tess Henry, whom Macy interviewed during drives to Henry's Narcotics Anonymous meetings for several months.

There are no easy fixes, of course. Macy writes, "America's approach to its opioid problem is to rely on Battle of Dunkirk strategies—leaving the fight to well-meaning citizens, in their fishing vessels and private boats—when what's really needed to win the war is a full-on Normandy Invasion." It's indeed time to storm the beaches, and Dopesick is a moving, must-read analysis of a national crisis.

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage and edited online for clarity. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Choice Reviews

Dopesick delves deeply into the opioid overdose death crisis currently menacing the US. Presently, opioid deaths exceed the numbers of AIDS/HIV casualties, and the epidemic shows no signs of abatement. Macy, a journalist, began studying the opioid crisis over two decades ago—before it spun out of control. Her analysis is wide-ranging: she interviews public health officials, nurses, doctors, law enforcement personnel, addiction medical specialists, addicts, those in recovery, and their families. Providing a macro level understanding, she systematically explores how Purdue Pharma aggressively marketed OxyContin painkilling capsules without any firm scientific foundation, resulting in sharply rising numbers of addicted users while economic obsolescence began to affect rural America. Dopesick also offers a powerful micro-level analysis as Macy established enduring associations with those impacted by the crisis, following subjects through their repeated recovery efforts, interviewing some even in prison, and seeing some succeed in renouncing their addictions while others relapsed or experienced fatal overdoses. This heart-wrenching narrative calls attention to the US government's failure to adequately address this burgeoning crisis. An important read for anyone seeking to better understand the opioid death epidemic. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

--W. Feigelman, emeritus, Nassau Community College

William Feigelman

emeritus, Nassau Community College

Kirkus Reviews

Harrowing travels through the land of the hypermedicated, courtesy of hopelessness, poverty, and large pharmaceutical companies.A huge number of Americans, many of them poor rural whites, have died in the last couple of decades of what one Princeton researcher has called "diseases of despair," including alcoholism, suicide, and drug overdoses caused by the hopeless sense that there's a lack of anything better to do. Roanoke-based investigative journalist Macy (Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South, 2016, etc.) locates one key killer—the opioid epidemic—in the heart of Appalachia and other out-of-the-way places dependent on outmoded industries, bypassed economically and culturally, and without any political power to speak of, "hollows and towns and fishing villages where the nearest rehab facility was likely to be hours from home." Prisons are much closer. Macy's purview centers on the I-81 corridor that runs along the Appalachians from eastern Tennessee north, where opioid abuse first rose to epidemic levels. She establishes a bleak pattern of high school football stars and good students who are caught in a spiral: They suffer some pain, receive prescriptions for powerful medications thanks to a pharmaceutical industry with powerful lobbying and sales arms ("If a doctor was already prescribing lots of Percocet and Vicodin, a rep was sent out to deliver a pitch about OxyContin's potency and longer-lasting action"), and often wind up dead or in jail, broke and broken by a system that is easy to game. Interestingly, Macy adds, "almost to a person, the addicted twentysomethings I met had taken attention-deficit medication as children." Following her survey of the devastation wrought in the coal and Rust belts, the author concludes with a call to arms for a "New Deal for the Drug Addicted," a constituency that it's all too easy to write off even as their number climbs. An urgent, ey e -opening look at a problem that promises to grow much worse in the face of inaction and indifference. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

New York Times best-selling author Macy (Factory Man; Truevine) starts with a drug dealer who set about hooking high school football stars in a small Virginia town, then moves to users, families, and first responders to show that America's opioid crisis is rooted in both greed and desperation. Addiction thrives on the pain engendered by unemployment and diminished opportunity in this country today. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal Reviews

"Americans, representing 5 percent of the world's population, consume 80 percent of its opioids." Macy (Factory Man; Truevine) brings that statistic down to the personal level as she relates individual stories of OxyContin use in the United States, while also tracing its regulatory history and legal, medical, and social ramifications. The intertwined factors that have led to today's opioid epidemic play out in stories of health-care providers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, politicians, drug dealers, users, and family members. Starting with her own community of Roanoke, VA, Macy effectively shows how opioid abuse plays no favorites as it works its way into all socioeconomic levels, races, and ethnicities. The accounts of addicts and their families leave no doubt about the power the chemicals hold over the brains they alter. Addicts soon begin using to avoid the symptoms of withdrawal (dopesick) rather than gaining any pleasurable high. Controversies abound over what treatments work. Abstinence versus medication-assisted therapy is an ongoing debate, while profit motives and insurance problems are also factors. VERDICT Macy's use of current research by various experts makes clear how complex the opioid problem is, but the strength of this narrative comes from the people in the day-to-day battle.—Richard Maxwell, Porter Adventist Hosp. Lib., Denver

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Journalist Macy (Truevine) takes a hard and heartbreaking look at the cradle of the opioid addiction crisis, the Appalachian region of Virginia and nearby states. She places the responsibility for the epidemic squarely on Purdue Frederick, makers of OxyContin, and its sales division, Purdue Pharma, which engaged in near-predatory marketing practices to sell a drug that has wreaked havoc on the lives of 2.6 million Americans who are currently addicted, with more than 100 dying per day from opioid overdoses. In the first of three sections, she addresses "big pharma" in telling detail, outlining how the overprescribing of pain medication in doctors' offices and emergency rooms created a market demand that was then met by illegal drug peddlers on the streets. Section two follows the spiral of addiction as users of prescription pills no longer able to afford their habit turn to heroin, a cheaper and more lethal solution to feed their fix. In the last section, the author changes the focus to what has become an addiction treatment industry. Macy potently mixes statistics and hard data with tragic stories of individual sufferers, as well as those who love and attempt to treat them. One addict, Tess Henry, was just 26 when she was first interviewed by Macy and, despite multiple attempts at rehab so that she could raise her infant son, she was dead within three years. Macy's forceful and comprehensive overview makes clear the scale and complexity of America's opioid crisis. (Aug.)