I recently finished Dream Land by Sam Quinones. The book is about the American Opiate Epidemic and how we got to the opiate crisis we are in today. It weave the stories of young illegal Mexican dealers who are seeking a way out of poverty with the lives of rich, white, suburban teens who have everything and still feel the need to escape and isolate themselves first with prescription painkillers and then later with heroin. I have always loved the song "Mad World" by Gary Jules. Remember watching at the end of the film Donnie Darko when I was a teenager and thinking that is what life can be like for some people. It is a mad world. Teens who have so much are wanting to escape. There must be something our society is not providing to our youth to make them feel like there is "no tomorrow" and that they should want to "drown their sorrows." You contrast the experience of these teens with privilege and to the drug dealers from this small town in Mexico and the contrast becomes a bit wild. They dealers come from extreme poverty and should have many reasons to want to escape into a drug induced dream world but they don't. Instead they are focused on pulling them and their family out of poverty.
I am not sure what the solution to the opiate epidemic is, but I do think that Sam Quinones points to how the problem is deeper than just over prescribing prescription pain killers. We have to look at what is causing people to want to escape or numb their emotional pain with drugs in the first place.
Word Count: 278
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