-
Dopesick
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $29.65
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Finding Tess
- A Mother’s Search for Answers in a Dopesick America
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Christmas Eve, 2017, Tess Henry was found dead in a dumpster in Las Vegas. Tess was a 28-year-old new mother, a former honor roll student, and a high school basketball player from suburban Roanoke, Virginia, a place ravaged by the national opioid crisis. The New York Times best-selling author Beth Macy chronicled Tess and her mom, Patricia, through Tess' harrowing, years-long battle to recover from heroin addiction in her award-winning book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America.
-
-
Exhausting and heartbreaking
- By Sda on 04-08-20
By: Beth Macy
-
Pain Killer
- An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic
- By: Barry Meier
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story, and business exposé, Pain Killer takes a hard-hitting look at how a powerful drug touted as the salvation for millions triggered a national tragedy. At its inception, the legal narcotic OxyContin was seen as a pharmaceutical dream, a "wonder" drug that would herald a sea change in medical care while reaping vast profits for its maker. It did do that; but it also unleashed a public health crisis that cut a swath of despair and crime through unsuspecting small towns, suburbs, and cities across the country.
-
-
Infuriating and Compelling
- By TiffanyD on 12-24-18
By: Barry Meier
-
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
- A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
- By: Lori Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
-
-
It was like a hallmark movie being waterboarded into my ears for 15 hours
- By Amazon Customer on 10-01-19
By: Lori Gottlieb
-
Empire of Pain
- The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The prize-winning and best-selling author of Say Nothing presents a grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.
-
-
Full Account of the Sackler Conspiracy
- By Edward Bisch on 04-13-21
-
American Overdose
- The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Chris McGreal
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
-
-
An important read
- By Macmom4 on 02-18-19
By: Chris McGreal
-
Lost Connections
- Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
- By: Johann Hari
- Narrated by: Johann Hari
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Chasing the Scream, a radically new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety - and how can we really solve them?
-
-
lost loved ones to his beliefs be cautious .
- By John Doumar on 07-27-18
By: Johann Hari
-
Finding Tess
- A Mother’s Search for Answers in a Dopesick America
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Christmas Eve, 2017, Tess Henry was found dead in a dumpster in Las Vegas. Tess was a 28-year-old new mother, a former honor roll student, and a high school basketball player from suburban Roanoke, Virginia, a place ravaged by the national opioid crisis. The New York Times best-selling author Beth Macy chronicled Tess and her mom, Patricia, through Tess' harrowing, years-long battle to recover from heroin addiction in her award-winning book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America.
-
-
Exhausting and heartbreaking
- By Sda on 04-08-20
By: Beth Macy
-
Pain Killer
- An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic
- By: Barry Meier
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story, and business exposé, Pain Killer takes a hard-hitting look at how a powerful drug touted as the salvation for millions triggered a national tragedy. At its inception, the legal narcotic OxyContin was seen as a pharmaceutical dream, a "wonder" drug that would herald a sea change in medical care while reaping vast profits for its maker. It did do that; but it also unleashed a public health crisis that cut a swath of despair and crime through unsuspecting small towns, suburbs, and cities across the country.
-
-
Infuriating and Compelling
- By TiffanyD on 12-24-18
By: Barry Meier
-
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
- A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
- By: Lori Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
-
-
It was like a hallmark movie being waterboarded into my ears for 15 hours
- By Amazon Customer on 10-01-19
By: Lori Gottlieb
-
Empire of Pain
- The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The prize-winning and best-selling author of Say Nothing presents a grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.
-
-
Full Account of the Sackler Conspiracy
- By Edward Bisch on 04-13-21
-
American Overdose
- The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Chris McGreal
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
-
-
An important read
- By Macmom4 on 02-18-19
By: Chris McGreal
-
Lost Connections
- Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
- By: Johann Hari
- Narrated by: Johann Hari
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Chasing the Scream, a radically new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety - and how can we really solve them?
-
-
lost loved ones to his beliefs be cautious .
- By John Doumar on 07-27-18
By: Johann Hari
-
Dreamland
- The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital centre of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America—addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.
By: Sam Quinones
-
Factory Man
- How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Kristin Kalbli
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With over $500 million a year in sales, the Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. But beginning in the 1980s, the Bassett company suffered from an influx of cheap Chinese furniture as the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately was forced to send its production offshore to Asia. Only one man fought back. That man is John Bassett III, a descendant of the Bassetts who is now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of over $90 million.
-
-
Portrait of a One Fingered Salute!
- By James on 03-03-15
By: Beth Macy
-
The Panama Papers
- How the World's Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money
- By: Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late one evening investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels he then receives documents showing a mysterious bank transfer for $500 million in gold. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help to hide people who don't want to be found.
-
-
highly recommended for the ears of the 99% and 1%
- By Craig S Smith on 12-06-18
By: Frederik Obermaier, and others
-
The Gene
- An Intimate History
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
-
-
Scientific history blended with humanity
- By S. Yates on 05-23-16
-
Road to Jonestown
- Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
- By: Jeff Guinn
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1950s a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the Gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to Northern California. He became involved in electoral politics and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.
-
-
Very Interesting to Learn About the Events
- By Celeste on 04-13-18
By: Jeff Guinn
-
The Least of Us
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Dreamland, a searing follow-up that explores the terrifying next stages of the opioid epidemic and the quiet yet ardent stories of community repair.
-
-
Top tier journalism and 100% honest
- By Anonymous User on 11-24-21
By: Sam Quinones
-
Chaos
- Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
- By: Tom O'Neill, Dan Piepenbring
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents.
-
-
16 hours went by fast
- By Wagger on 08-30-19
By: Tom O'Neill, and others
-
Chernobyl 01:23:40
- The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster
- By: Andrew Leatherbarrow
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 01:23:40 on April 26th 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands, and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated, and inaccurate stories.
-
-
Modern Trip to Chernobyl Almost Ruins a Great Book
- By Benjamin on 03-21-17
-
The Fifth Vital
- By: Mike Majlak, Riley J. Ford
- Narrated by: Mike Majlak
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Majlak was a 17-year-old from a loving middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting Oxycontin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends.
-
-
Book is straight fire
- By Amazon Customer on 03-04-21
By: Mike Majlak, and others
-
Bottle of Lies
- The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom
- By: Katherine Eban
- Narrated by: Katherine Eban
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From an award-winning Fortune reporter, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals the life-threatening dangers posed by globalization - The Jungle for pharmaceuticals.
-
-
Accurate, Authentic and Genuinely Scary
- By Byzantine Dixie on 05-19-19
By: Katherine Eban
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut.
-
-
Outstanding and eye-opening
- By serine on 11-29-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Leave Out the Tragic Parts
- A Grandfather's Search for a Boy Lost to Addiction
- By: Dave Kindred
- Narrated by: Dave Kindred
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered.
-
-
Thank you for writing this book.
- By Carla S. on 06-11-21
By: Dave Kindred
Publisher's Summary
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, unpausible 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 best-selling 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.
"Everyone should read Beth Macy's story of the American opioid epidemic." (Professor Anne C. Case, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and Sir Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics)
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic Reviews
"Essential reading...Macy follows one specific drug 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." (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)
"Dopesick will make you shudder with rage and weep with sympathy. Beth Macy's empathy and fearless reporting reaches beyond the headlines to tell the stories of how real people have been left to cope with the fallout of corporate greed, and the willful blindnesses of businesses and the government. Macy again shows why she's one of America's best non-fiction writers" (Brian Alexander, author of Glass House)
"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." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
Featured Article: All the Best Literary Screen Adaptations to Stream in 2021
There is so much to look forward to in film and TV this year—and so much audio to make you the ultimate insider. You may be surprised by how many movies and TV shows were adapted from excellent audiobooks. Get ready to dig in, because this covers just about every great adaptation for 2021, and then some. Find something great in this guide whether you listen before you watch or take a deep dive after the credits roll.
More from the same
Author
Narrator
What listeners say about Dopesick
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Addisyn Luby
- 11-16-19
This book is BRUTAL.
oh I don’t know where to even start. This is a book about pharmaceuticals. The author spent one chapter talking about the history. There is literally no context. There’s no counter story. There’s nothing.
And the author reads it herself and it is UNLISTENABLE. there are dozens of grammar mistakes. Mispronunciations. And just flat out indiscernible parts of her speaking. If I didn’t know any better I’d assume she was running up the stairs the whole time she read it. There are entire sentence repeats where she messes up rereads it and just goes on. No editing.
193 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gail
- 10-29-19
Authors should stop narrating
I'm sure this is a good book with terrific information, but my brain could not process the author's monotone, un-nuanced rambling. After a few chapters, I realized I couldn't recount anything from the previous chapters and deemed the listen a waste of time.
99 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sarah
- 08-27-18
Useful, but recommend Dreamland instead
Dopesick is good, interesting, and compelling. It is very focused on big pharma and individual stories, however. For a more comprehensive, investigative journalistic account, I recommend Dreamland, by Sam Quinones. Quinones not only tells the whole story of falsely-interpreted medical studies that led to the "statistics" used by big pharma to say that opiods weren't addictive; he also traces the production of heroin to Mexican villages and examines its distribution in the United States.
Beth Macy's book is getting a lot of press right now, and it's worthy of the press, but Sam Quinones published his book at the outset of this epidemic and gives a far more in-depth report of its complete takeover. I'm sorry he hasn't received as much attention for his good work.
Additionally, Beth Macy may be a good writer, but she is a terrible and distracting narrator. Stumbling over words, she sounds like an unrehearsed reader in church trying to read a Biblical passage with particularly unpronounceable family and place names.
237 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michele
- 04-18-19
Revealing insight!
This gives me a unique insight into the opioid epidemic. I'm an emergency nurse, and I've thought for a long time it was a matter of "Just say no". From this book I've learned it's not and realize I as a nurse am a part of the problem. I now want to align myself to be a part of the solution.
35 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Roberta Rose
- 08-13-18
Amazingly sad scary and informative.
I am one of those people who is caught in the middle. I need pain control. Do not abuse. Am extremely cautious and had meds cut because of others abuse this book showed the side I did not see. Have to say thank you for opening my eyes
67 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Crystal Forbes
- 03-01-19
Required reading for all Americans
As a child of rural Ohio who moved away to the “big city”, I’m ashamed of my ignorance of the effects of opioids as explained in layman’s terms by the author. My own sibling has tangled with addiction, including opioids, for 20 years. This is the first journalistic study of the history of this plague and its devastation on middle America that I have read. The individual stories so vividly shared by the author clearly echoed tragic events from my own hometown (countless overdose deaths, kids being surrendered to the foster care system or elderly grandparents, family’s savings being spent on rehab after non-evidenced based rehab, crowded court dockets, meager rehabilitation resources, and prison sentences). Like the billboards currently peppering the highway roadside “Denial, Ohio is everywhere” (and clearly I have lived in some degree of willful ignorance concerning addiction for far too long!) The tragedies in this book are spread too far and wide to really comprehend. This story made me weep at my own ignorance and makes my heart tight with anger at the corporate greed and misguided public policies that continue to compound the problems of addiction and literally destroy the lives of my generation (and future generations). The despair of rural America really is difficult to grasp (even for someone who should know better). This book needs to be forced into the hands of every aspiring politician of any stripe and piled on the bookshelves of every public and school library across the nation. Opioids don’t just impact those that are addicted, they are not “someone else’s problem”, they are literally killing modern America across every race, class, and zip code. This book has made me angry and incredibly depressed. Thank you, Beth Macy for telling this terrible story.
26 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rachel M Rieken
- 08-13-18
Extraordinarily useful for a parent of an addict.
As the parent of an adult addict I find myself in a constant search for how and why this mess started. When you go through years of struggle trying to save the life of your child knowing damn well that you'll likely fail, you want answers. I've found myself, more and more, searching out books that give history rather than books that I think will help. I can't save my child, but I want to know what we're going to do, as a country, to prevent this from spreading.
I applaud and want to thank the author for all her hard work. I think book should be a staple learning tool in high school, of not late middle school.
44 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Danielle E
- 08-09-18
Front line worker
As an emergency room nurse who sees the daily prescriptions for narcotics, the chronic pain patients, the addicted to narcotics patients, and the overdose patients...this is a book I hope reaches the general masses.
62 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ned C. Armstrong
- 08-10-18
Thorough, incisive, compassionate
I began this book with some skepticism. I had just completed an intense study of books on drugs and addiction in preparation for leading a group at my church this fall, having read Mate, Quinones, Hari, Szalavitz, Onkret, Hart, and others, and I wondered if this book would be merely a rehash of those works, or worse, contradictory. I’m glad I decided to add this book to my list of resources. Dope Sick is up to date, with events and developments right up to 2018, including attitudes of the Trump administration. The author drives home the indispensable place harm reduction must have in the quest for solutions. The story builds to an emotional conclusion that left me deeply moved. I will be enthusiastically recommending this book as background reading to my study group.
61 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chris Henson
- 08-17-18
Eye opening. Jaw dropping. Heart breaking. Game changing.
First a caveat. Beth Macy is a good friend of my family and me. I’m confident I would feel the same way about this book if I’d never met her.
I grew up in Wise County, VA, and have lived in Roanoke for 28 years now. Both of these communities factor enormously in the gripping, gritty reporting Macy does here. She’s always a brilliant story reteller, somehow able to get deeper into lives than most of us would be brave enough to consider. Her previous books — Factory Man and Truevine — prove this.
Dopesick is far deeper, rawer and more personal than I’m usually comfortable with. It has to be. The opioid and heroin crises that decimated my home towns came out of nowhere, like a tornado that has already razed the trailer park, yet is just now starting to make a sound. The pictures Dopesick paints are bleak and gray and grainy. If you’re a parent of a young person, you will question every conversation you ever had with your kids, every prescription med you made them swallow. And you will wonder how the hell we’ll ever get past this national emergency. You’ll cling to your people. You’ll lose some sleep. You’ll probably even tear up.
But mostly you’ll be grateful that people like Macy are telling this story. You’ll be amazed at how open some people are about their broken lives. If we’re going to defeat this monster, the battle surely starts here.
I know this sounds like hyperbole. It’s not. You’ll see.
A note about the audiobook. It’s read by the author. This can be a turnoff for some listeners. It’s not in this case. Beth’s is the voice you want breaking this news to you.
32 people found this helpful