There’s Something Happening Here

Beth Macy’s Dopesick follow up offers some glimmers of hope

I’ve read and enjoyed all of fellow Roanoker Beth Macy’s nonfiction books, including the one that drew the most attention – and ultimately became an award-winning Hulu miniseries about the Big Pharma-fueled opioid crisis that had much of its roots right here in southwest Virginia, Dopesick. Now her fourth book, "Raising Lazarus - Hope, Justice and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis," has been released and as of this writing the former Roanoke Times journalist was in the middle of a book tour that included national interviews. Towards the end of Raising Lazarus Macy writes that Dopesick, released in 2018, left her depressed. She figured she was done reporting on such a heart-wrenching topic at the time.

Then she started hearing from people on the front line, the “stone rollers” doing the dirty work to help people who in many cases by no fault of their own became addicted at first when they were overprescribed by physicians – who were being pushed to do so by companies like Purdue Pharma. When the makers of Oxycontin finally and belatedly got around to making their opioid pills harder to abuse, illegal heroin stepped into the void and the downward spiral continued for many.

“It is an economic issue [as well],” notes Beth Macy – companies in North Carolina factory plants for example that can’t hire enough workers because so many fail the drug test. Others not able to hold on to jobs because they are indeed dopesick. With money from the highly contentious Sackler family/Purdue Pharma litigation settlement set to finally start filtering out to localities to fight Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and Substance Abuse Disorder (SUD) we can only hope it is used wisely. Macy notes in Raising Lazarus however that many of those doing the best work are former users themselves, getting clean needles or the medication “bupe” out to users to help wean them away from opioids, while law enforcement agencies and local government in some cases still see OUD and SUD as criminal – not the brain altering disease its now recognized to be. “We need to start putting guard rails on our public safety in this nation,” says Macy, “I’m frustrated at the end, but I’m really full of hope about these amazing innovators who are out there on the ground – seeing to the least of us.”

Raising Lazarus is a meaty book with input from the seemingly hundreds of people Beth Macy interviewed for it, and it also offer slivers of hope that we are finally “getting it.” If you want to read more Empire of Pain about the Sackler family – referred to in Macy’s new book – and The Hard Sell about the ensuing Fentanyl crisis and another Big Pharma company that pushed an even more deadly narcotic are recommended.

THERE’S SOMETHING HAPPENING HERE

By Gene Marrano

Executive Summary:

Raising Lazarus is a meaty book with input from the seemingly hundreds of people Beth Macy interviewed for it.