#145 The Opioid Crisis w/ Beth Macy
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2019
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Right now an average of one person dies about every 11 minutes from an opioid overdose in the United States. The staggering number of lives ruined by opioid addiction has finally gotten public attention in recent years, but the origins of the crisis goes back to 1996, when Purdue Pharma began selling Oxycontin through a misleading marketing campaign that claimed it was unlikely to cause addiction. In this episode, Ben speaks with journalist Beth Macy, who chronicled the lives of those affected by opioid addiction in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and across the country. Her book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America tells the history of the opioid crisis through the deeply intimate stories of the people and communities that were hit hard by addiction, but never stopped fighting the companies who placed profit over humanity.
Beth Macy is a journalist and author of three books, the most recent of which, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (Little, Brown & Company, 2018), was an instant NY Times Best Seller. Her audio documentary Finding Tess: A Mother's Search for Answers in a Dopesick America was released on October 3, 2019 is and is available by clicking here. For more on Beth Macy, visit her personal website- intrepidpapergirl.com- and follow her on twitter at @papergirlmacy.
You can get Dopesick and two additional audiobooks for just $15 from Libro.fm. Just click here and enter promo code RTN at checkout!
The Road to Now is a member of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Richard the Rostafarian from Fear of a Craft Beer Planet, a podcast that talks a lot about the parallels between the beer industry and the music business. But really, we talk about whatever we want. The show is made up of four of us. Me, Richard the Rostafarian, the radio guy, Jay Rose, Ryan Egan, and Rob Forzic. |
| 0:22.9 | They're the beer guys. |
| 0:24.3 | They're the ones to teach me about craft beer, and I'm the one that gets the show on the air. |
| 0:28.6 | You can find us on all social media platforms at Fear of a Craft Beer Planet. |
| 0:43.5 | I'm Ben Sawyer, and this is the road to now. |
| 0:51.0 | Today's guest is a hero, a journalist, someone doing some really amazing work. |
| 0:56.7 | It's Beth Macy, who is reported on the opioid crisis and written a fantastic book called Dopesick, Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. |
| 1:02.9 | I don't know if you've been following in the news, but there has been a lot going on recently. |
| 1:07.9 | Finally, the company that made this oxycotton that started the whole thing, |
| 1:13.1 | the company Purdue Pharmaceuticals, they've finally gotten cornered. They are having to pay out |
| 1:18.5 | for the damages done by their, I think we could all agree, unethical practices. You'll hear |
| 1:24.0 | more about that in this episode. And so I've been trying to get Beth on since I got this book back almost a year ago when it first came out. |
| 1:32.7 | She is really the type of person who was doing amazing work and just more proof of why we need to support good journalism in this country. |
| 1:40.8 | She followed the stories of the people affected. |
| 1:43.5 | For those of you who are with us on Patreon, you know that I did a short overview of the opioid crisis a couple weeks ago. |
| 1:51.5 | At that point, I had kind of thought maybe Beth wouldn't come on the podcast. |
| 1:55.4 | I had contacted her agents. |
| 1:58.5 | And shortly after recording that, they got back to me. It felt like light had shown |
| 2:02.6 | out of the sky. It just was a great moment. And so it was really a fantastic interview. And I |
| 2:08.9 | highly recommend this book, Dope Sick, Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted |
| 2:13.4 | America. As I said, it just came out last year. Speaking of recommending them, I have you guys |
| 2:19.5 | heard about our live shows? Because Bob and I are doing some live shows. We've got some dates coming |
... |
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