Monday, November 18th
7:00pm
Silver Diner
(Clarendon)
Free
All alumni, parents, and friends are invited to join the UVA Club of Washington DC for our November Book Club! For this month, we’ll be diving into “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America” by Beth Macy.
Book Description:
“In this extraordinary work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of a national drama that has unfolded over two decades. From the labs and marketing departments of big pharma to local doctor’s offices; wealthy suburbs to distressed small communities in Central Appalachia; from distant cities to once-idyllic farm towns; the spread of opioid addiction follows a tortuous trajectory that illustrates how this crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched.
Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy sets out to answer a grieving mother’s question-why her only son died-and comes away with a gripping, unputdownable story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy investigates the powerful forces that led America’s doctors and patients to embrace a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death” -Amazon
For more information on this event, please contact either Jess Roberts (CLAS ’14) or Simay Okyay (CLAS ’14) at uvabookclub@dchoos.org