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.
This was an interesting perspective on publishing. I am a minuscule publisher, not even up to small
stature. I am a self-published author
and thus am a publisher in the looses sense of the word. I have published books for others. They
provide me with their text and I see that it is formatted, laid out,
illustrated and published. So this book,
although dealing with publisher dramatically larger and more successful than I
am, resonated with me. 
