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Summary
Chronicles America's more than twenty-year struggle with opioid addiction, from the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, through the spread of addiction in distressed communities in Central Appalachia, to the current national crisis.
Language
English
Books
Summary
Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, journalist Beth Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question--why her only son died--and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. 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, yet deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus.
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English
Regular print
Summary
Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, journalist Beth Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question--why her only son died--and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. 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, yet deeply human portraits of the families and first responders struggling to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus.
Language
English
Audio disc
Summary
In this masterful work, Beth Macy takes us into an epicenter of America's twenty-plus year struggle with opioid addiction. The first to chart the tragic spread of prescription and street drugs from distressed small communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs, disparate cities, and once-idyllic farm towns, a trajectory that explains how the crisis persisted for so long and became so entrenched.
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