Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

Beth Macy's account of America's opioid epidemic traces the crisis across two decades, from pharmaceutical boardrooms to courtrooms and American homes. The narrative spans from the labs and marketing departments of major drug companies to local doctor's offices, wealthy suburbs, distressed small communities in Central Appalachia, and once-idyllic farm towns. Macy begins with a dealer who arrives in a small Virginia town and turns high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics. She investigates the forces that led American doctors and patients to embrace a medical culture centered on painkiller overtreatment, beginning with OxyContin's introduction in 1996. In communities featured in her earlier book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers to manage joblessness and generate income, while privileged teens trade pills in suburban neighborhoods, and high school athletes fall into prostitution, jail, and death. Through portraits of families and first responders, Macy documents how opioid addiction unites Americans across geographic, partisan, and class lines. Despite twin crises in drug abuse and healthcare, she identifies signs of resilience among ordinary people working to build better futures for themselves, their families, and their communities.