Opioid Epidemic

Recommended by This Month's Science Café Speaker

• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones (2015)
  • In this fascinating, often horrifying investigation, journalist Quinones delves into the heart of America's obsession with opiates like heroin, morphine, and OxyContin. He doesn't hold back as he describes how widespread addiction and pill mills devastated entire communities, such as the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio. Through extensive interviews and research, Quinone gives a very human perspective to this topic, telling the tales of addicts and pushers, researchers and cops alike. (Publishers Weekly review) Book Critics Circle Award Winner for 2015 General Nonfiction.
• White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin - A Memoir by Michael Clune (2013)
  • Michael W. Clune's original, edgy yet literary telling of his own story takes us straight inside such an addiction—what he calls the Memory Disease.With black humor and quick, rhythmic prose, Clune's gripping account of life inside the heroin underground reads like no other, as we enter the mind of the addict and navigate the world therein. Clune is currently a Professor in the Department of English at Case Western Reserve University. This book made several "Best Books" lists of 2013 including The New Yorker.

Additional Non-fiction

• Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire by Kevin Deutsch (2017)
  • In 2015, Baltimore plunged into the worst American riots in recent history. In the chaos, two high school honor-roll students, "Brick" and "Wax, used their smarts, computer skills, ambition and gang connections to change the world of illegal drugs forever. With their gang associates, they looted pharmacies and robbed dealers, stealing over one million doses of prescription narcotics and heroin with a street value of more than $100 million. They were soon supplying cities along the East Coast, creating a whole new class of opioid addicts with the FBI and DEA trailing in their wake. Deutsch brings us into this underworld, where social unrest and cutting-edge technology allow criminals to seed the next wave of dysfunction and despair.
• Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It's So Hard to Stop by Anna Lembke (2016)
  • Drug Dealer, MD, is for anyone whose life has been touched in some way by addiction to prescription drugs. Dr. Lembke gives voice to the millions of Americans struggling with prescription drugs while singling out the real culprits behind the rise in opioid addiction: cultural narratives that promote pills as quick fixes, pharmaceutical corporations in cahoots with organized medicine, and a new medical bureaucracy focused on the bottom line that favors pills, procedures, and patient satisfaction over wellness. Also available as audiobook.
• Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction by Peter Grinspoon (2016)
  • Dr. Peter Grinspoon seemed to be a total success: a Harvard-educated M.D. with a thriving practice; married with two great kids and a gorgeous wife; a pillar of his community. But lurking beneath the thin veneer of having it all was an addict fueled on a daily boatload of prescription meds. When the police finally came calling--after a tip from a sharp-eyed pharmacist--Grinspoon's house of cards came tumbling down fast. His professional ego turned out to be an impediment to getting clean as he cycled through recovery to relapse, his reputation, family life, and lifestyle in ruins. What finally moves him to recover and reclaim life--including working with other physicians who themselves are addicts--makes for inspiring reading.
• The Gilded Razor: A Memoir by Sam Lansky (2016)
  • The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out. Yet as he journeyed from the glittering streets of Manhattan, to a wilderness boot camp in Utah, to a psych ward in New Orleans, he only found more opportunities to create chaos--until finally, he began to face himself.
• Prescription Drug Abuse: A Reference Handbook by David E. Newton (2016)
  • This outstanding resource guide for students and young adults provides an introduction to the history of prescription drug abuse that explains how this problem has arisen and examines the social, political, economic, and health issues associated with prescription drug abuse in modern society.

• Opioid Overdose
  • An extensive resource looking at a number of aspects of the opioid epidemic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Final Report: Opioid Use, Misuse, and Overdose in Women (July 19, 2017)
  • From the Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health
• Fentanyl: A Briefing Guide for First Responders (2017)
  • From the U.S. Department of Justice's Drug Enforcement Administration
• Opioids: The Prescription Drug & Heroin Overdose Epidemic
  • From the United States Department of Health and Human Services
• Drug Overdose Deaths Among Adolescents Aged 15–19 in the United States: 1999–2015 (2017)
  • From the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics
• Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999–2015 (2017)
  • From the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics
• Opioid Overdose Prevention Toolkit (2016)
  • From the United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
• A Shared Burden: The Military and Civilian Consequences of Army Pain Management since 2001 by Craig Trebilcock (2015)
  • Issued by the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute