BOOK REVIEWS – Read – It’s Healthy –
March 19, 2019 – Journalists must impose narrative coherence on mountains of information. Macy, who has reported on the epidemic from her hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, since 2012, focuses on individual stories—like the blindsided father who first hears of Oxy when he asks a team of paramedics why their best efforts couldn’t resuscitate his teenage son, found blue and lifeless from an overdose in the bathroom of his suburban home. Through interwoven tales of grieving parents turned activists, increasingly alarmed local health professionals, and beleaguered first responders, Macy makes palpable the scale and intensity of suffering, shame, and institutional denial. She also unravels the tangled knot of corporate greed, political conflict of interest, and regulatory neglect that delayed recognition of the epidemic, blamed the victims, and allowed some members of the Sackler family, principal owners of Purdue Pharma, to make billions in profit with near impunity. For the most part, Macy’s approach successfully blends the personal and political, though there are moments when the names and stories dissolve into a mass of nearly indistinguishable misery like characters in a 19th-century Russian novel. The photos, index, and copious endnotes are helpful, but I found myself wishing for a list of dramatis personae. That quibble aside, Dopesick is a compelling narrative.
