There's no shortage of statistics about the depth of America's opioid epidemic — there were 72,000 overdose deaths just last year — but numbers don't tell the whole story. Beth Macy takes a ground-level look at the crisis in Dopesick, a new book focusing on central Appalachia. Macy has spent three decades reporting on the region, focusing on social and economic trends and how they affect ordinary people — she says this area is the birthplace of the modern opioid epidemic.
Dopesick explores the lives of young heroin users and their long-suffering parents, and takes an intimate look at drug dealers and the cops, judges, doctors and health activists struggling to fight the epidemic. Macy also details the actions of executives of a pharmaceutical company that aggressively marketed opioids. Many users became addicted to drugs such as OxyContin when the medications were prescribed for pain, and moved to heroin when it became harder to get more pills.
Macy says she herself grew up with a father who was addicted to alcohol, which made addiction a particularly difficult subject to tackle.
[For more on this story by DAVE DAVIES, go to https://www.npr.org/sections/h...m-a-dopesick-america]
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