Dreamland by Sam Quinones

 This is a non-fiction tale of America’s Opiate epidemic.  To say this book was depressing would be truly understating the emotion.   The book details how big pharma and criminal drug dealers brought about the epidemic.  Frankly big pharma was more criminal than the drug dealers.   What I got from the book was that the root of the problem was not the opiates but societal changes that led to the epidemic.

Greed on the part of society and specifically big pharma were factors that led to a general miasma of our society.   Outsourcing of jobs, forgetting about community and social issues has led to a downward slide of ambition and motivation.   Communities that lost their industry found former solid citizens living on the dole just to keep on living.  When you feel you have no future and no options, despair sets in and despair leads to seeking relief of any kind.  The relief came from pill mills distributing addictive drugs that provided a taste of oblivion. 

The fact that many of the new addicts were no longer inner-city minorities but were former productive workers and the children of the suburbs made the country sit up and notice the problem.  

Dreamland was a symbol of a community and its demise.  The physical community continued by the sense of community disappeared.  

Years ago as a guidance counselor I ran seminars for volunteers to deal with kids on drugs.   The person I replaced had been a pharmacist who focused on the drugs as opposed to the reason for the drugs.   My focus was why.   Why a 16-year-old girl from a good family was turning tricks to support her speed and the heroin she used to come down from speed.   It wasn’t the drugs it was the despair the person felt that led to seeking relief in oblivion.  That was in the 1970’s.   Today, many homes have some kind of legal opiate in their medicine cabinet.   The ease of access and the addictive aspect of opiates provide the fuel for our opiate epidemic.  

Until we deal with the feelings of despair, the lack of hope, the inability to provide the basics of life, people will seek something to drown their feeling and provide oblivion.  

This book was depressing and valuable, it shows that steps are being taken but the road to success is long. 

This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.