Raising Lazarus : hope, justice, and the future of America's overdose crisis

Raising Lazarus Hope, justice, and the future of America's overdose crisis

Beth Macy

Book - 2022

In her gripping, necessary, and deeply humane follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Dopesick, journalist Beth Macy brings us to the next frontier of the opioid crisis, telling the story of the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose in communities that are too often left to fend for themselves, and of the activists and relatives of the dead who are still struggling for accountability in America's courts. Nearly a decade into the second wave of America's overdose crisis, pharmaceutical companies have yet to answer for the harms they created. As pending court battles against opioid makers, distributors, and retailers drag on, addiction rates have soared to record-breaking levels during the COVID pandemic, ill...ustrating the critical need for leadership, urgency, and change. Meanwhile, there is scant consensus between law enforcement and medical leaders, nor an understanding of how to truly scale the programs that are out there, working at the ragged edge of capacity and actually saving lives. Distilling this massive, unprecedented national health crisis down to its character-driven emotional core as only she can, Beth Macy takes us into the country's hardest hit places to witness the devastating personal costs that one-third of America's families are now being forced to shoulder. Here we meet the ordinary people fighting for the least of us with the fewest resources, from harm reductionists risking arrest to bring lifesaving care to the homeless and addicted to the activists and bereaved families pushing to hold Purdue and the Sackler family accountable. These heroes come from all walks of life; what they have in common is an up-close and personal understanding of addiction that refuses to stigmatize--and therefore abandon--people who use drugs, as big pharma execs and many politicians are all too ready to do. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is--not where we think it should be or wish it was. Bearing witness with clear eyes, intrepid curiosity, and unfailing empathy, she brings us the crucial next installment in the story of the defining disaster of our era, one that touches every single one of us, whether directly or indirectly. A complex story of public health, big pharma, dark money, politics, race, and class that is by turns harrowing and heartening, infuriating and inspiring, Raising Lazarus is a must-read for all Americans.

Saved in:
Place a Hold Save to List Email this

2nd Floor Show me where

362.293/Macy
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 362.293/Macy Checked In
Subjects
Opioid abuse > United States.
Medication abuse > United States.
Opioid abuse > Treatment > United States.
Medication abuse > Treatment > United States.
Published
New York : Little, Brown and Company 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Beth Macy (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxvi, 373 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-355) and index.
ISBN
9780316430227
  • Prologue: The Secret of Patient Care
  • Part 1. Affliction
  • Chapter 1. Stone-Rollers
  • Chapter 2. Die-In
  • Chapter 3. Freeze Frame
  • Chapter 4. White Privilege
  • Part 2. Acta Non Verba
  • Chapter 5. The Avengers
  • Chapter 6. Good Criminals
  • Chapter 7. Weaponizing Addiction
  • Chapter 8. Peer Pressure
  • Part 3. Baby Steps
  • Chapter 9. The Moral Arc
  • Chapter 10. Encounters with the Unseen
  • Chapter 11. Backburn
  • Part 4. Judge for Yourselves
  • Chapter 12. "You Literally Cannot Give a Shit"
  • Chapter 13. The War on People
  • Epilogue
  • Author's Note and Glossary
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Journalist Macy, bestselling author of Dopesick (CH, Mar'19, 56-2816), chronicles in painstaking detail the tangled elements that contribute to the opioid epidemic, along with the diverse approaches taken in attempts to find a solution. The legal trials involving Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family point out the role that profiteering greed has played in triggering the addiction predicament and the political favors that delay remediation within a system that continues to deny responsibility. Interviews with some of the addicted casualties and many health care workers illustrate diverse attempts to assist drug dependent populations. Macy emphasizes that substance abuse should not be regarded as a criminal offense, but rather as a medical problem. The current routine of drug user incarceration only exacerbates the situation and punishes poor and jobless victims, especially those with more highly pigmented skin color. The case studies Macy reports highlight the lack of financial support to supply the basic needs of those afflicted (including needles), develop alternative remedies, and provide counseling, and illustrate the critical need for basic courtesy. The addict must be reconceptualized from criminal to medically needy patient. Macy presents an arresting portrayal of the obstacles preventing solutions to this drug crisis and stresses the need to raise these victims from their degrading dependency. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Rita A. Hoots, emeritus, Sacramento City College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review

This sequel of sorts to journalist Macy's Dopesick (2018), a Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction Finalist, is a passionate account that splits its attention between the legal cases brought against the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma as a result of their aggressive marketing of OxyContin, and the attempts of individuals in communities afflicted by problems with opioid addiction to help their neighbors. While the courtroom coverage can be overheated and muddled, Macy excels at vivid, detailed depictions of the day-to-day struggles of dealing with addiction in several small towns in West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina during a period when those communities were also confronting the pandemic. She argues persuasively that substance abuse should be treated as a medical condition rather than a crime, and focuses on treatments with the potential to help, emphasizing the efforts of people who are necessarily skirting the law in order to provide aid to those who need it most. Thoroughly engaged in the lives of her subjects, never dispassionate, Macy immerses readers in horrific reality while illuminating faint hints of hope.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Award-winning journalist Macy (Dopesick) imbues empathy and compassion into her follow-up book about the opioid crisis. Narrating her own work, Macy heartbreakingly delivers exemplary stories of activists and ordinary people fighting to help those experiencing opioid-use disorder, pleading their cases in courts, and educating others to help remove the stigma of substance-use disorder. She objectively details several types of programs that have experienced successes and have been shut down by local governments, such as needle-exchange programs to slow the spread of HIV, hepatitis C, and deaths from dirty needles; treatment modalities for those with mental illness and addiction; and use of buprenorphine as a tool to help treat opioid addiction. Blame for the opioid crisis is placed squarely on Richard Sackler, the billionaire U.S. businessman and physician who was chairman and president of Purdue Pharma. Sackler covered up OxyContin's high addictiveness and instructed pharmaceutical representatives to promote higher doses to increase company profits. Macy puts a face on this ongoing crisis with stories of hope and success, options to explore, and comfort to grieving families. VERDICT An eye-opening exposé that encourages action and support for those experiencing substance-use disorder.--Stephanie Bange

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Macy follows her consequential book Dopesick with another account of big pharma's role in killing Americans and of the frontline workers who are trying to save them. "They say we're going to lose a generation if we don't do something. I say we've already lost that generation." So noted a West Virginian while recounting that nearly everyone in her town has been affected by the opioid crisis. Macy hits the small towns of Appalachia and the archives to deliver another damning indictment of the Sackler family, who "willfully created the opioid crisis…a murderous rampage that has victimized hundreds of thousands of people in this country." Via their company Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers unleashed a flood of OxyContin on the market, bribed doctors to overprescribe it, and then relied on the stigma and shame attached to addiction to ward off lawsuits. When the lawsuits finally arrived, the Sacklers were prepared. "For a quarter century," writes Macy, "the Sacklers masterminded and micromanaged a relentless marketing campaign for their killer drug, then surgically drained the company of $10 billion when they saw trouble on the horizon." The Sacklers have since been shamed and stigmatized, their name removed from museum halls and university buildings, but they have been able to keep their money--so far, anyway. Meanwhile, in what Macy calls the "Uneven States of America," the drug crisis continues to grow, with future substance-dependent people beginning their drug journeys, not ending them, with heroin and fentanyl. Against this epidemic stand health workers, legal reformers, and pioneering judges who have established drug courts to dispense not punishment but treatment. Then there are the conservative politicians from, ironically, the red states most likely to be awash in a flood of drugs, who remain busy "amplifying NIMBYism" to oppose needle exchanges, free clinics, homeless shelters, and other social welfare vehicles for helping the afflicted. A profoundly disconcerting book that, with luck, will inspire reform to aid the dopesick and punish their suppliers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Similar Items