Another look at healing: 'Dopesick' author focuses on people tackling the opioid crisis in new book 'Raising Lazarus'

This is another lift from National Public Radio, this time from their "Here & Now" show on August 30, 2022. Under discussion here is Beth Macy's book 'Raising Lazarus.'

The show that I'm focusing on here has to do with what gets called "the opioid crisis" and how we respond to that crisis and the people at Ground Zero in that crisis. I feel overwhelmed by it much of the time. Maybe you share my feelings. Over time I have opposed needle exchanges, and I have opposed legalization of drugs because I have believed that these signal social approval or surrender to something that is bad for people. I remember dope taking over communities in the early 1970s, and I continue to believe that that was used as a means of social control and to put a brake on organizing and protests.  

But this story confronts our lack of compassion and attention to what's going on, and I imagine that Beth Macy's book 'Raising Lazarus' does the same. I'm looking forward to reading the book. Some of what is discussed in this story touches upon what I recently blogged about when reviewing the book 'Dopamine Nation.' 

This is not abstract for me. I know people who struggle with opioid use, and if you're a working-class person you probably have family or live in a community that has been negatively affected by Big Pharma and doctors pushing pain meds and the illegal trade in these drugs. I come from an area of the country devastated by this and by the social conditions that created and gave room for this devastation. These drugs, and worse ones, seem to be the cause of some terrible suffering where I live now as well.

I'm ashamed of my past lack of compassion. I think that this interview makes a strong case for harm reduction rather than the policies that we have in place now. I'm still not in the legalization camp, and I'm not ready to fully embrace the author's view that "anything that gets people to care" is going to be a social good, but I do want to support a version of "barefoot doctors" in our communities, fully resourced, who "raise Lazarus" and get people on the road to recovery. In my mind, recovery entails some kind of progressive social action. It sounds as if Macy agrees with that to some extent. 

Macy is telling a true story, with all of the ambiguities that truth entails. As I said, I have not read the book, but it does sound as if she ultimately sees the story she is telling as one of healing and hope.    

Please listen to the NPR story here.

Here is an ABC news story on the book and author:    

Here is a publisher's video on the book: