Opioid Reckoning: Love, Loss, and Redemption in the Rehab State

Summary

More than 450,000 Americans have died from opioid overdoses since the late 1990s. In Opioid Reckoning, Amy C. Sullivan explores the complexity of the crisis through firsthand accounts of people grappling with the reverberating effects of stigma, treatment, and recovery.

By centering the voices of many people who have experienced opioid use, treatment, recovery, and loss, Sullivan exposes the devastating effects of a one-size-fits-all approach toward treatment of opioid dependency. Opioid Reckoning questions current treatment models, healthcare inequities, and the criminal justice system. Sullivan also imagines a future where anyone suffering an opioid-use disorder has access to the individualized care, without judgment, available to those with other health problems.

Opioid Reckoning presents a captivating look at how the state that invented "rehab" addresses the challenges of the opioid epidemic and its overdose deaths while also taking listeners into the intimate lives of families, medical and social work professionals, grassroots activists, and many others impacted by the crisis who contribute their insights and potential solutions. In sharing these stories and chronicling their lessons, Sullivan offers a path forward that cultivates empathy, love, and hope for anyone affected by chaotic drug use and its harms.