American Epidemic by John McMillian (Editor)
The New Press: 10/22/2019
eBook review copy; 304 pages
ISBN-13:
9781620975190
American Epidemic: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Opioid Crisis
is a very highly recommended collection of powerful published articles
on the opioid crisis. This is a heart-breaking eye-opening examination
of the devastation caused by the increasing addiction to opioids and an
essential introduction to the crisis.
This collection is a must read. It will focus your attention on what
matters, what is happening right now. In the introduction John
McMillian writes: "In 2018, drug overdose deaths in the United States
set a new record. There were more than 70,000 of them, mostly due to
opioids." He continues: "Let’s put this in perspective. Seventy thousand
is far more than the
number of Americans who died in 2017 from car accidents (40,100), or
guns (39,773), or suicide (47,173). It is more than the number of
American servicemen killed during the entire Vietnam War (58,220). It is
far more than all of the American deaths from 9/11, the Iraq War, and
the Afghanistan War, combined (39,396, as of March, 2019). Drug
overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under fifty.
Life expectancy in the United States has diminished over the past three
years - a phenomenon that is unprecedented since World War II." Where is
the outrage?
I know two families who have had a child die due to an opioid
addiction. I can't be the only one. Why is this very real and growing
catastrophe being overlooked in favor of "maybe" crises. What is
actually stealing childhoods and causing harm? These pieces published between 2012 and
2018 cover the crisis and the very real people who are affected and who
are dealing with this epidemic - users, families, medical personal, and
law enforcement. The well-written and informative articles cover the
crisis in different areas of the country, although the epidemic is worse
in certain sections. Contributors include: Leslie Jamison, Beth Macy, Tom
Mashberg and Rebecca Davis O'Brien, Sam
Quinones, Susan Dominus, Eli Saslow, Eric Eyre, Sarah Resnick,
Germna Lopez, Christopher Caldwell, Margaret Talbot, James Winnefeld, Joe Eaton, Katharine Q. Seelye, Andrew Sullivan, Gabor Maté, Johann Hari, Adi Jaffe, Maia Szalavitz, and Julia Lurie.
I had several sections highlighted from my reading but I want to
share two. One is from Christopher Caldwell in First Things (April
2017): "The culture of addiction treatment that prevails today is losing
touch
with such candor. It is marked by an extraordinary level of political
correctness. Several of the addiction professionals interviewed for this
article sent lists of the proper terminology to use when writing about
opioid addiction, and instructions on how to write about it in a caring
way. These people are mostly generous, hard-working, and devoted. But
their codes are neither scientific nor explanatory; they are political."
The second is based on the fact that the brain isn't fully developed
until people are in their mid-twenties, which made what James Winnefeld
wrote in "Epidemic," from The Atlantic on November 29, 2017 eye-opening:
"Because the brain is so adaptable while it’s still developing, it’s
highly susceptible to dependencies, even from non-opioids such as
today’s newly potent marijuana strains. We now understand that early
marijuana use not only inhibits brain
development; it prepares the brain to be receptive to opioids. Of
course, like opioids, marijuana has important medical applications, and
it seems to leave less of a mark on a fully matured brain. It’s worth
examining whether it would make sense to raise the legal marijuana age
to 25, when the brain has fully matured."
Disclosure:
My review copy was courtesy of The New Press.
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