Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

This guy held a seminar questions & answers at my college. He mentions the area I live in within the book. I read the reviews on here, but got the book in case I wanted to go to the q&a. Where I live there is a huge problem with drugs, and I'm a public health major so I'm really interested in how we came to have the problem and how to deal with it. My local health department is currently trying to implement a needle exchange program.

Anyway, I hated the writing style of this book. I like "short stories" and background information about characters, but this guy was all over the place. Sorry but I don't recommend this book unless you want to write out info about the characters to keep track.

'Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic' is a timely book. It's an important book. It's even a well-written book!

Author & crime-reporter Sam Quinones stumbled upon the subject nearly 2 decades ago. By his account, he was given a whispered lead that 'Mexicans from some small village' were delivering quality black-tar heroin like pizza. An addict calls a number provided by another addict, & was told where & when to pick up their order. What made this rumor really intriguing to Quinones is that this wasn't happening in big-city, traditional heroin centers. It was in small & medium size cities in the central & western portions of the US. Places like Portsmouth OH. Portland OR. Columbia SC.

Further piquing his interest, Quinones discovered that 1) the clientele were all middle-to-upper-class Anglos, the children of judges & doctors & business owners, 2) that nearly all of them had initially been addicted to Oxycontin, but switched opiates when Oxy became too expensive for their habits, & 3) that this entire new wave of heroin addicts could be blamed on the aggressive marketing tactics of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, who claimed Oxycontin wasn't addictive because it was time-released. Adding insult to injury, the tidal wave of deaths-by-opiate overdose almost exactly mirrored the amount of Oxy's that were being prescribed! Quinones couldn't believe no one else had noticed this!

Only they had. The parents of the deceased broke their silence, one by one. The government officials in health, law-enforcement & the judiciary were becoming swamped with this new & unheard-of wave of deaths. Ground Zero (as Quinones terms it) was Portsmouth OH, where the only new businesses that succeeded were 'pill-mills', which had lines snaking down the streets with addicts waiting for their turns with the doctor.

Meanwhile, in small-town Mexico ('ranchos' as defined by the author) black-tar heroin was being produced cheaply. It wasn't sold locally; almost all of it was shipped to the US, to be distributed by non-English speaking drivers who carried pagers that displayed delivery codes. None of them actually used the products they carried in small balloons in their mouths; they were on salary, & focused on customer service. Rotated in & out of small-town America in 6 month segments, their primary goal in life was appearing to be a 'big man' to the folks back home in the ranchos of Nayarit.

Engagingly written, 'Dreamland' weaves these 2 complementary stories skillfully, from the early cluelessness of the municipal police to the dreams & goals of the Hispanic drivers & cell-chiefs. It's a sobering look at life in the Rust Belt.

However, one little problem niggled at me throughout this book: whenever Quinones writes 'couple', he DOESN'T write 'of'. He writes statements like 'bought a couple balloons', which REALLY took me out of the flow of the narrative. Yes, it's a minor annoyance, one any good editor should have picked up on. It's partly why this review only got 4 stars instead of 5. But if that deters you from reading 'Dreamland', then you're making a mistake. This is a cutting indictment of early 21st century American culture.

The story is very readable. It is made up of many vignettes. Some of the stories are about the people that became addicted and some of the stories are about the drug dealers. The gist of the book is about "Big Pharma." They mass produced oxycontin and peddled it to the medical community as "non-addicting".Doctors, as well as those that were truly in pain, fell for this advertising scam. Many years later, when these patients could no longer afford the pills, the drug dealers introduced them to black tar heroin. Keep in mind that many, if not most, of these addicts were from white, middle class families. These were kids that were not supposed to become drug addicts, but did..
This book is truly fascinating, and I recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.

I am an RN with 43 years experience and the kind of thing he speaks of in this book I have watched grow my entire career. It is bone chilling and heart rending to watch people descend into addiction and then to realize it was set up to happen makes it even more frightful. I have done primary detox on patients and then watched them descend back into the madness because no support was given past the initial time of rehab. When will we learn? Sam explains the cycle of drug exposure and addiction very simply and well. This should be a wake up call, unfortunately the call is falling on deaf ears.

Mr. Quinones comprehensive book was very enlightening and eye-opening. It is a two-fold story, detailing the Oxycontin pill mill explosion of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, in that same time span, the Mexican black tar heroin dealers and their “pizza delivery” business mode. Quinones research is well document and thorough. The only minor complaint I have, and this is minor, is it seemed a bit repetitive. If the reader can set that aside, I recommend this for anyone trying to deepen their understanding of the heroin culture and its illegal trade.

to detail oriented takes awhile to get going, hard read

It is not a happy book to read but everyone and especially those with children need to read at least once. I read a ton. I had some pretty extensive dental work done this year and part of last so I ended reading 77 books last year. It has been a life-long hobby started by two wonderful Great Aunt retired school teachers. They also taught me to keep track of what I had read.
Dreamland will scare the holy hell out of you and well it should. One of my much loved cousins got hooked on OxyContin due to a sports injury and we came so very close to losing her. We are the rarity of being a super-close family. Other members of our extended family have not been so lucky. And damn-well believe me on this point, though a lot of the pill mills have been shut down but you can still make one phone call and have Black Tar heroine delivered quicker than Papa John's Pizza. This book will stay with you forever.

Complex story with numerous factors weaved perfectly together by author. The writing and descriptive structure of the book creates a vivid and heartbreaking experience for the reader. A very difficult story to hear, partially because I am a recovering opiate user and also because it shatters our sense of reality and trust and shows that this epidemic truly transcends race, social and economic class. The addict is no longer the poor, colored reject from the wrong side of town. I am a prime example: I'm a 39 y/o Asian-American, educated woman from an affluent beach town in Southern California. If you didn't know any better, you would think I had it all, yet I didn't... My opiate addiction began when I was prescribed painkillers after a C-section from my first child. My OBGYN continued to prescribe the pills for 3 plus years after that C-section (for back pain and menstrual pain), even while i was pregnant with my second child. I had no problem getting refill after refill after refill , with only a cursory question of , you're not getting addicted right? Of course not Dr., I'm a pregnant, respectable looking Asian girl! And that was enough to get me what I needed when I needed it, until I checked myself into rehab.

So forget whatever idea you had about addicts because that's from a time passed. What killed me most about this story was the deception perpetrated by big pharma and the willingness of some government officials and doctors charged with protecting the public to assist in the deception. Many doctors however, believed they were doing the right thing by prescribing the pills because they were manipulated to do so. Of course people trust their doctors and believe that if the doctor is giving it to them then it must be safe. I know I did. My sense of trust in a system I believed was trustworthy is now shattered. I am rebuilding my life and I'm 18 months sober but my outlook will never be the same. Trust should never just be bestowed on anyone or anything.

I am reviewing the Audible version. First and foremost, the narrator is fantastic.
If you have an opiate addict in your family or as a friend, then Dream Land is essential reading. I also recommend to add "Anerican Pain"- another well done book. Dream Land is well wrote, well constructed, informative and adventurous. The author clearly did his homework. His research is thorough and presented as telling seperate stories which all evolve and merge. I purchase 2-4 audiobooks per week on top of physical books- and in a year I have only gave 3 books 5 stars. (American Pain was another). You won't be disappointed.

What Quinines has written, seems to be the currently vogue school of thought in our country. I am glad that I read this prior to it becoming such a popular concept. The tragedy that even with this explanation of opiate exploitation, there is no movement to significantly close the door.
What candidate on either side has come forward with a plan to curb opiate prescriptions or reduce the cross border smuggling of Heroin.