Horrors of opioid addiction explored in LA writer’s memoir

The Heart And Other Monsters –

July 17, 2020 -The voice speaking above serves as a narrator throughout her sister’s ghastly descent into the hellacious pit of drug addiction is that of Los Angeles-based author Rose Andersen. Her memoir “The Hearts and Other Monsters,” which she worked on while getting her MFA at CalArts Creative Writing program, is quite like a diary with each successive journal entry becoming increasingly more macabre as sister Sarah’s journey into darkness becomes ever more pronounced.

Most people become addicted to opioids as a result of a legitimate prescription from a doctor for pain. A concomitant reaction to the drug as it binds to receptors in the body is to produce a “sense of well-being or euphoria.” No eventual addict desires to become a hopeless passenger on the road to despair when they take that first pill or shot. But the statistics don’t lie about the dangers of opioids as explained by Andersen in her statement, “About 80% of people who use heroin begin by first abusing prescription opioids.” Further, according to the NIH (The National Institute of Health) 2018 data shows that every day, 128 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids

In the chapter entitled Opioids 101, Sarah describes to her sister that “the original point was to feel good. And then it became about not feeling bad, about avoiding the pain of withdrawal and the deep unending depression that took over when she tried to get clean.”