Dopesick

5 stars for the content. I knew there was an opioid epidemic, but didn't know anything about how it started, how it progressed, and how slow finding a solution (and agreeing to any solutions!) has been. A good overview, and also how did I not know how bad this is in my neck of the woods?! Macy kept naming places and I was like, oh yep, I've been there, oh, I know where that is...

The writing was a little disjointed and repetitive, and it took me a bit to figure out how we'd jumped from OxyContin over-prescribing to heroin dealing, but I think where it really shines is in the human element - in the interviews with parents who have lost their teenaged and young adult children to overdose deaths; in conversations with doctors in Virginia counties who saw the problem coming from a mile away, tried to fight it from the pharma-rep all the way up, and how hard they've still been trying to get their patients appropriate help after more than 20 years; and in the text messages with addicted user-dealers, some who want desperately to stay clean, and some who never quite manage it. Macy excels at putting human faces and human stories front and center - they are, first and foremost, still people, not just addicts and dealers.