Dopesick & Finding Tess - Beth Macy

Non-Fiction

Rating: 8/10

If you are sauntering through a middle-class life and all it affords you thinking that you can’t be touched by the opioid crisis., think again. Whatever privilege you have earned or inherited will not protect you from the potential of the soul crushing wreckage addiction can make of your life.

It’s a very real possibility that if you love an addict, you will lose them tragically.  And in the moments between when everything was normal and this unspeakable conclusion, they will profess their love for you in the same treacherous breath they lie to you with.

These are things I knew well before reading these books.  Beth Macy does an excellent job of educating the novice and reminding us that addicts are so much more than their addiction.  They are poets, geniuses, musicians, techies, teachers, nurses and more.

This is excellent narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference.  It is in the end, a rally cry for action.

Footnote: Something to think about…Oxycontin and Heroin are chemical cousins. In the proper dosage and taken in the most direct method, they achieve the same high.  One is legal, the other not.  One is prescribed by individuals with doctorates in medicine, the other bought on the street.