What do you think?
Rate this book
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
As an adult book, Sam Quinones's Dreamland took the world by storm, winning the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction and hitting at least a dozen Best Book of the Year lists. Now, adapted for the first time for a young adult audience, this compelling reporting explains the roots of the current opiate crisis.
In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Quinones explains how the rise of the prescription drug OxyContin, a miraculous and extremely addictive painkiller pushed by pharmaceutical companies, paralleled the massive influx of black tar heroin--cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel.
Introducing a memorable cast of characters--pharmaceutical pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, teens, and parents--Dreamland is a revelatory account of the massive threat facing America and its heartland.
In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Quinones explains how the rise of the prescription drug OxyContin, a miraculous and extremely addictive painkiller pushed by pharmaceutical companies, paralleled the massive influx of black tar heroin--cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel.
Introducing a memorable cast of characters--pharmaceutical pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, teens, and parents--Dreamland is a revelatory account of the massive threat facing America and its heartland.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published July 16, 2019
75 people are currently reading
452 people want to read
About the author
Sam Quinones
16 books540 followersSam Quinones is a long-time journalist and author of 3 books of narrative nonfiction.
He worked for the LA Times for 10 years. He spent 10 years before that as a freelance journalist in Mexico.
His first book is True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx, published in 2001, a collection of nonfiction stories about drag queens, popsicle-makers, Oaxacan basketball players, telenovela stars, gunmen, migrants, and slain narco-balladeer, Chalino Sanchez.
In 2007, he published Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In this volume he tells stories of the Henry Ford of velvet painting, opera singers in Tijuana, the Tomato King of Jerez, Zacatecas, the stories of a young construction worker heading north, and Quinones' own encounter with the narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua.
His third book was released in 2015. Dreamland: the True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic recounts twin tales of drug market in the 21st Century. A pharmaceutical company markets its new painkiller as "virtually nonaddictive" just as heroin traffickers from a small town in Mexico devise a system of selling heroin retail, like pizza. The result is the beginning of America's latest drug scourge, and the resurgence of heroin across the country.
The book has received rave reviews in Salon.com, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, American Conservative, Kirkus Review, and National Public Radio.
Amazon readers gave Dreamland 4.7 stars and called it "a masterpiece" and "a thriller."
"I couldn't put it down," said one. Said another: "This book tells one of the most important stories of our time."
Following Antonio's Gun, the San Francisco Chronicle called Quinones "the most original American writer on Mexico and the border out there."
He has done numerous Skype sessions with book groups that have chosen his books to read.
Quinones also writes True Tales: A Reporter's Blog, at his website, http://www.samquinones.com.
For several years, he has given writing workshops called Tell Your True Tale. Most recently the workshops have taken place at East Los Angeles Public Library, from which have emerged three volumes of true stories by new authors from the community.
For more information, go to http://www.colapublib.org/tytt/.
He worked for the LA Times for 10 years. He spent 10 years before that as a freelance journalist in Mexico.
His first book is True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx, published in 2001, a collection of nonfiction stories about drag queens, popsicle-makers, Oaxacan basketball players, telenovela stars, gunmen, migrants, and slain narco-balladeer, Chalino Sanchez.
In 2007, he published Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In this volume he tells stories of the Henry Ford of velvet painting, opera singers in Tijuana, the Tomato King of Jerez, Zacatecas, the stories of a young construction worker heading north, and Quinones' own encounter with the narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua.
His third book was released in 2015. Dreamland: the True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic recounts twin tales of drug market in the 21st Century. A pharmaceutical company markets its new painkiller as "virtually nonaddictive" just as heroin traffickers from a small town in Mexico devise a system of selling heroin retail, like pizza. The result is the beginning of America's latest drug scourge, and the resurgence of heroin across the country.
The book has received rave reviews in Salon.com, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, American Conservative, Kirkus Review, and National Public Radio.
Amazon readers gave Dreamland 4.7 stars and called it "a masterpiece" and "a thriller."
"I couldn't put it down," said one. Said another: "This book tells one of the most important stories of our time."
Following Antonio's Gun, the San Francisco Chronicle called Quinones "the most original American writer on Mexico and the border out there."
He has done numerous Skype sessions with book groups that have chosen his books to read.
Quinones also writes True Tales: A Reporter's Blog, at his website, http://www.samquinones.com.
For several years, he has given writing workshops called Tell Your True Tale. Most recently the workshops have taken place at East Los Angeles Public Library, from which have emerged three volumes of true stories by new authors from the community.
For more information, go to http://www.colapublib.org/tytt/.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
March 16, 2020
WHY IS THIS A THING.
Why is there such a thing as a Young Adult Edition of a normal nonfiction book?
I promise that people, like, age 12-17 or whatever do not need things dumbed down for them so desperately that it necessitates a whole entire separate publication. I swear.
I would never, ever, ever in a million years have picked this up, except it was sent to me by the publisher. I don’t feel obligated to read things that are sent to me without my request or agreement, but in this case, the topic is so important that I figured why not.
Honestly, I wish I had read 3-4 longform articles instead.
This was fairly unemotional and, to me, borderline unreadable. It takes stories of incomprehensible tragedy and renders them into facts and numbers and occasional one-off sentences about children and siblings and friends and parents left behind.
Worst of all, this contained a lot of sweeping, uncorrected prejudices inserted without nuance - stereotypes about people on food stamps, people with Medicaid cards, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, Mexicans, African Americans. Statements like “all ranchos hate black people” and “all rancho fathers hit their children” were referenced time and time again as if they were fact, rather than biased interpretations of a few cases as representing a whole.
Maybe this can be chalked up to it being the young adult edition, but I found it to be a reprehensibly conveyed work.
Bottom line: I can’t speak for the original edition, but if you’re thinking of reading this book - read basically any other source instead.
---------
the content in this book: very important.
basically everything about how it was written and formatted and relayed: not for me.
review to come / 1.5 stars
---------
just doing some light weekend reading
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
Why is there such a thing as a Young Adult Edition of a normal nonfiction book?
I promise that people, like, age 12-17 or whatever do not need things dumbed down for them so desperately that it necessitates a whole entire separate publication. I swear.
I would never, ever, ever in a million years have picked this up, except it was sent to me by the publisher. I don’t feel obligated to read things that are sent to me without my request or agreement, but in this case, the topic is so important that I figured why not.
Honestly, I wish I had read 3-4 longform articles instead.
This was fairly unemotional and, to me, borderline unreadable. It takes stories of incomprehensible tragedy and renders them into facts and numbers and occasional one-off sentences about children and siblings and friends and parents left behind.
Worst of all, this contained a lot of sweeping, uncorrected prejudices inserted without nuance - stereotypes about people on food stamps, people with Medicaid cards, illegal immigrants, drug addicts, Mexicans, African Americans. Statements like “all ranchos hate black people” and “all rancho fathers hit their children” were referenced time and time again as if they were fact, rather than biased interpretations of a few cases as representing a whole.
Maybe this can be chalked up to it being the young adult edition, but I found it to be a reprehensibly conveyed work.
Bottom line: I can’t speak for the original edition, but if you’re thinking of reading this book - read basically any other source instead.
---------
the content in this book: very important.
basically everything about how it was written and formatted and relayed: not for me.
review to come / 1.5 stars
---------
just doing some light weekend reading
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
January 13, 2025
I ended up with the young adult edition because it was on sale. This book provides A TON of information. As an Ohioan whose family has been impacted by the opioid crisis, this really put everything in context.
(Also: anyone who doesn't see the need for YA nonfiction has clearly never met teenagers who aren't voracious readers.)
(Also: anyone who doesn't see the need for YA nonfiction has clearly never met teenagers who aren't voracious readers.)
August 24, 2020
I could not put this book down! The non-fiction documentary reads like an engaging fictional story. This version is the YA adaptation of the adult edition of Dreamland. It tells the factual story of how pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and pain centers all over the United States, especially in middle class America, contributed to a large population of people of all ages from teens to the elderly who became addicted to prescription opiods, often beginning with OxyContin. How did this happen? It all started so innocently, but quickly snowballed into an interesting but destructive form of business, based on theft, greed, lies, and addiction.
Meanwhile in California, another form of business is seeing great success. The business model involves teens from ranchos near Xalisco, Mexico who work as drivers to deliver small "balloons" filled with black tar heroin. Their target customers are middle to upper middle class Americans, who want to meet in safe locations such as fast food parking lots in the middle of the day.
The author cleverly weaves the story showing how the opiod addictions tie into the black tar heroin sales. Fascinating and heartbreaking, the story shows how families are torn apart, young lives are lost, and parents are unaware until it's too late. Portsmouth, Ohio where the story begins, comes full circle with the story showing that addiction can be overcome when the community joins together and takes steps to make changes. A sobering and eye-opening read for sure.
Meanwhile in California, another form of business is seeing great success. The business model involves teens from ranchos near Xalisco, Mexico who work as drivers to deliver small "balloons" filled with black tar heroin. Their target customers are middle to upper middle class Americans, who want to meet in safe locations such as fast food parking lots in the middle of the day.
The author cleverly weaves the story showing how the opiod addictions tie into the black tar heroin sales. Fascinating and heartbreaking, the story shows how families are torn apart, young lives are lost, and parents are unaware until it's too late. Portsmouth, Ohio where the story begins, comes full circle with the story showing that addiction can be overcome when the community joins together and takes steps to make changes. A sobering and eye-opening read for sure.
February 23, 2020
Richie’s Picks: DREAMLAND: THE TRUE TALE OF AMERICA’S OPIATE EPIDEMIC, A YOUNG ADULT ADAPTATION by Sam Quinones, Bloomsbury, July 2019, 224p., ISBN: 978-1-5476-0131-8
“I’ve seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie’s like a setting sun”
-- Neil Young (1971)
“SAN FRANCISCO -- Downstairs at the medical examiner's office, the bodies lay side by side on stainless steel tables and shelves, shrouded and anonymized in white bags, each person identifiable only by a protruding foot that had been toe-tagged.
Upstairs, Luke Rodda, the chief forensic toxicologist, looked over his morning docket and the terse reports from first responders.
Male, 33, ‘prior history of fentanyl overdose,’ found at bus stop.
Male, 27, white powder in baggie.
Male, 51, found by construction worker, syringe next to him.
There had been at least nine apparent drug-related deaths over the previous three days in late January, Rodda said.
‘This is our new norm now,’ he said.”
-- front page of the Washington Post, “Drug overdose deaths rise in the West while they drop in the East” (2/21/20)
“On Super Bowl Sunday 2014, America awoke to the news that one of its finest actors was dead.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, forty-six, was found that morning in his New York apartment, a syringe in his arm and powder heroin in packets branded with the Ace of Spades near his corpse. Blood tests showed he had heroin in his system, combined with cocaine, amphetamine, and benzodiazepine.
The Oscar-winning actor--a father of three-- had checked into rehab the previous May for ten days, and then, pronouncing himself sober again, left to resume a hectic film schedule. Just as the death of Rock Hudson thirty years ago forced the country to recognize AIDS, Hoffman’s death awoke it to the opiate epidemic.
Within days, media outlets from coast to coast discovered that thousands of people were dying. Heroin abuse, the news reports insisted, was surging. Almost all the recent heroin addicts were first hooked on prescription painkillers, they reported.”
That last sentence bears repeating: “Almost all the recent heroin addicts were first hooked on prescription painkillers...” This is the crux of the story told here by journalist Sam Quinones.
Humans have ingested opiates for thousands of years. As the author notes, “Mesopotamians grew the poppy at the Tigris and Euphrates. The Assyrians figured out how to slice open the plant’s golf-ball-sized bulb and drain the goo inside that contains opium.”
Readers learn a number of facts about the history of opiates. But DREAMLAND primarily focuses on the use and abuse of these substances in the US over a two-decade period, between the mid-1990s and 2015, when the original version of DREAMLAND was published for adults.
Throughout DREAMLAND, the author shares jaw-dropping true stories of people central to the crisis: those who have worked at different points along the supply chains; former users; parents of dead users; law enforcement officials. The author brings together these narratives, illuminating how a confluence of circumstances led to a horrific national crisis. Things got so bad that, for the first time, in certain parts of the country, the number of deaths from car crashes was surpassed by opiate-related deaths.
How did this happen?
What we learn is that the drug manufacturer Purdue employed a big lie. They claimed that their OxyContin pills, a time-release version of the opiate-based drug Oxycodone, was not addictive. Then they employed armies of sales representatives to sell doctors on prescribing the drug to anyone with some pain to be “managed.”
Recreational drug users discovered that by crushing OxyContin pills, they could circumvent the time-release mechanism and get a powerful effect--twelve hours’ worth of time-release medication at once. “Pain clinics” arose, featuring doctors with dollar signs in their eyes. These immoral physicians prescribed the pills to anyone with the money for an appointment. People drove from one clinic to another to obtain hundreds of pills to use or sell. All these people, whose common motivation was to make a quick buck, greased the wheels for widespread abuse and addiction.
Meanwhile, a small town in Mexico led the way to a resurgence of heroin use in the US. A sophisticated marketing and delivery scheme was employed to make Mexican black tar heroin readily available, at low cost, in scores of medium-to-large American cities. Addicts were given phone numbers to call, and drivers would promptly deliver the goods--just like a pizza delivery service. The managers of these heroin supplier “cells” were in constant contact with their Mexican employers ensuring that a steady stream of supply was always on hand.
Thus, millions of Americans first became addicted to the opiate-based pills and then discovered lower-cost and high quality Mexican heroin available 24/7. This is how we got here. The gripping stories of real people involved in the various aspects of the crisis make DREAMLAND an addictive read. So many of us know friends, family members, and neighbors, who have been affected. And we’ve read the stories of famous people who have died with a needle in their arm.
Today, fentanyl, a synthetic version of heroin, is becoming the latest chapter in the story.
If you read the comments in reaction to Friday night’s Washington Post article, you encounter the same arguments heard decades ago about the futility of the war on drugs. But if we don’t do something significant about the sale and use of recreational drugs that are both addictive and deadly, what is the solution? Do we just accept that opiate use and abuse will continue to kill more people than car crashes? How do we dissuade today’s teens from becoming part of the gruesome statistics?
DREAMLAND shows how the pain clinics were put out of business and how Purdue was forced to concede that their product was addictive. Heroin sales forces were infiltrated and numerous headline-grabbing arrests were made. But plenty of addicts remain and now--subsequent to the book’s publication--we have the rise of fentanyl which is addicting and killing more people. Is this just the nature of the human beast?
Knowledge is power. Get this one into the hands of teenagers and their parents.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com
“I’ve seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie’s like a setting sun”
-- Neil Young (1971)
“SAN FRANCISCO -- Downstairs at the medical examiner's office, the bodies lay side by side on stainless steel tables and shelves, shrouded and anonymized in white bags, each person identifiable only by a protruding foot that had been toe-tagged.
Upstairs, Luke Rodda, the chief forensic toxicologist, looked over his morning docket and the terse reports from first responders.
Male, 33, ‘prior history of fentanyl overdose,’ found at bus stop.
Male, 27, white powder in baggie.
Male, 51, found by construction worker, syringe next to him.
There had been at least nine apparent drug-related deaths over the previous three days in late January, Rodda said.
‘This is our new norm now,’ he said.”
-- front page of the Washington Post, “Drug overdose deaths rise in the West while they drop in the East” (2/21/20)
“On Super Bowl Sunday 2014, America awoke to the news that one of its finest actors was dead.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, forty-six, was found that morning in his New York apartment, a syringe in his arm and powder heroin in packets branded with the Ace of Spades near his corpse. Blood tests showed he had heroin in his system, combined with cocaine, amphetamine, and benzodiazepine.
The Oscar-winning actor--a father of three-- had checked into rehab the previous May for ten days, and then, pronouncing himself sober again, left to resume a hectic film schedule. Just as the death of Rock Hudson thirty years ago forced the country to recognize AIDS, Hoffman’s death awoke it to the opiate epidemic.
Within days, media outlets from coast to coast discovered that thousands of people were dying. Heroin abuse, the news reports insisted, was surging. Almost all the recent heroin addicts were first hooked on prescription painkillers, they reported.”
That last sentence bears repeating: “Almost all the recent heroin addicts were first hooked on prescription painkillers...” This is the crux of the story told here by journalist Sam Quinones.
Humans have ingested opiates for thousands of years. As the author notes, “Mesopotamians grew the poppy at the Tigris and Euphrates. The Assyrians figured out how to slice open the plant’s golf-ball-sized bulb and drain the goo inside that contains opium.”
Readers learn a number of facts about the history of opiates. But DREAMLAND primarily focuses on the use and abuse of these substances in the US over a two-decade period, between the mid-1990s and 2015, when the original version of DREAMLAND was published for adults.
Throughout DREAMLAND, the author shares jaw-dropping true stories of people central to the crisis: those who have worked at different points along the supply chains; former users; parents of dead users; law enforcement officials. The author brings together these narratives, illuminating how a confluence of circumstances led to a horrific national crisis. Things got so bad that, for the first time, in certain parts of the country, the number of deaths from car crashes was surpassed by opiate-related deaths.
How did this happen?
What we learn is that the drug manufacturer Purdue employed a big lie. They claimed that their OxyContin pills, a time-release version of the opiate-based drug Oxycodone, was not addictive. Then they employed armies of sales representatives to sell doctors on prescribing the drug to anyone with some pain to be “managed.”
Recreational drug users discovered that by crushing OxyContin pills, they could circumvent the time-release mechanism and get a powerful effect--twelve hours’ worth of time-release medication at once. “Pain clinics” arose, featuring doctors with dollar signs in their eyes. These immoral physicians prescribed the pills to anyone with the money for an appointment. People drove from one clinic to another to obtain hundreds of pills to use or sell. All these people, whose common motivation was to make a quick buck, greased the wheels for widespread abuse and addiction.
Meanwhile, a small town in Mexico led the way to a resurgence of heroin use in the US. A sophisticated marketing and delivery scheme was employed to make Mexican black tar heroin readily available, at low cost, in scores of medium-to-large American cities. Addicts were given phone numbers to call, and drivers would promptly deliver the goods--just like a pizza delivery service. The managers of these heroin supplier “cells” were in constant contact with their Mexican employers ensuring that a steady stream of supply was always on hand.
Thus, millions of Americans first became addicted to the opiate-based pills and then discovered lower-cost and high quality Mexican heroin available 24/7. This is how we got here. The gripping stories of real people involved in the various aspects of the crisis make DREAMLAND an addictive read. So many of us know friends, family members, and neighbors, who have been affected. And we’ve read the stories of famous people who have died with a needle in their arm.
Today, fentanyl, a synthetic version of heroin, is becoming the latest chapter in the story.
If you read the comments in reaction to Friday night’s Washington Post article, you encounter the same arguments heard decades ago about the futility of the war on drugs. But if we don’t do something significant about the sale and use of recreational drugs that are both addictive and deadly, what is the solution? Do we just accept that opiate use and abuse will continue to kill more people than car crashes? How do we dissuade today’s teens from becoming part of the gruesome statistics?
DREAMLAND shows how the pain clinics were put out of business and how Purdue was forced to concede that their product was addictive. Heroin sales forces were infiltrated and numerous headline-grabbing arrests were made. But plenty of addicts remain and now--subsequent to the book’s publication--we have the rise of fentanyl which is addicting and killing more people. Is this just the nature of the human beast?
Knowledge is power. Get this one into the hands of teenagers and their parents.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com
November 20, 2023
A great book that was extremely informative, however, I accidentally bought the YA version of the book and would recommend the full text. It didn't go into as much detail as I think was needed for such a complex social issue, and while it got the point across very well, it felt rushed at points. This version of the book is suited better for teenagers and not adults looking for deep understanding.
The author did an excellent job on keeping this book engaging considering the content, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the history of the opioid epidemic and how it became the problem that it is today.
The author did an excellent job on keeping this book engaging considering the content, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the history of the opioid epidemic and how it became the problem that it is today.
August 16, 2020
I have been very curious about the origins of the opioid epidemic in the USA. This book was a fascinating, intertwined story of how the pharmaceutical industry, misinformed medical practitioners, an enterprising Mexican drug ring and vulnerable small towns merged together to create the perfect storm. I highly recommend this book if you are the least bit interested in this topic. Appreciatively, it also gave me a newfound understanding and sense of compassion for addicts and their lifelong struggle.
December 30, 2020
Hands down one of the MOST important I've read in a long time - not an exaggeration! This book deserves five stars for its accessibility and ability to resonate with families, medical professionals, teachers who've been touched in some way by opioid addiction. This book details how easily opiate use evolved into a heroin epidemic, how it ravaged small town America in Ohio and then quietly spread into privileged families across the USA. Drug addiction knows no boundaries, it’s a problem that can affect anyone, regardless of where they live, where they grew up, their race, gender or age. Makes me so sad for some many families that I know suffer the repercussions of opioid addiction on a daily basis. A must read for parents.
December 26, 2022
I read this because it was referenced in empire of pain? Maybe. Great book easy to digest.
March 4, 2025
A bit dated lol but read for work
July 17, 2025
Ok 3.5 I didn’t realize I checked out the YA adaptation 😭 I think I would have liked the full version better
July 10, 2024
I am torn between loving the book - I am a fact person, and this is ALL fact. No emotion. BUT - there is so much emotion behind drugs & their long lasting effects. For young adults, I feel like some emotion would be helpful.
July 12, 2023
You want to know how we ended up with the opioid epidemic? Here you go
February 29, 2020
The author details the rapid escalation of black tar heroin out of the small ranchero town of Xalisco, in the southwest Mexican state of Nayarit. Heroin and savvy sales tactics by the 'Xalisco Boys' drive demand and create a burgeoning public health crisis around the same time that Purdue Pharma and pill mills and 'pain clinics' were positioning OxyContin as the next best thing. It was perfect timing.
This title is somewhat similar to the scope and depth of Beth Macy's Dope Sick; but with no focus on the Sackler family. Quinones profiles the business model and strategies utilized by the Xalisco Boys that allowed them to duplicate and perfect their specific customer service approach across medium and and larger-sized cities all over the US including Charlotte, Columbus, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Charleston, Portland, Cincinnati, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Boise, Salt Lake City, Dayton, Seattle, and Omaha among others. The Xalisco Boys did not carry weapons as a rule and specifically avoided setting up their operations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago or Detroit due to existing turf, guns, and gangs.
According to this author, the epicenter of the heroin epidemic was in Portsmouth, Ohio. Portsmouth is also where the recovery community is now strongest. This book pairs well with 'The Pharmacist' on Netflix, a quick series profiling another pill mill in Louisiana in the early aughts by another unscrupulous doctor who was abusing OxyContin as well.
This title is somewhat similar to the scope and depth of Beth Macy's Dope Sick; but with no focus on the Sackler family. Quinones profiles the business model and strategies utilized by the Xalisco Boys that allowed them to duplicate and perfect their specific customer service approach across medium and and larger-sized cities all over the US including Charlotte, Columbus, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Charleston, Portland, Cincinnati, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Boise, Salt Lake City, Dayton, Seattle, and Omaha among others. The Xalisco Boys did not carry weapons as a rule and specifically avoided setting up their operations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago or Detroit due to existing turf, guns, and gangs.
According to this author, the epicenter of the heroin epidemic was in Portsmouth, Ohio. Portsmouth is also where the recovery community is now strongest. This book pairs well with 'The Pharmacist' on Netflix, a quick series profiling another pill mill in Louisiana in the early aughts by another unscrupulous doctor who was abusing OxyContin as well.
October 23, 2019
Dreamland does what all good narrative nonfiction does. It pulls the reader in, making them want to know more. I found the book compelling and powerful, as well as informative. Quinones does an excellent job of highlighting the history of the opiate epidemic and the many different sides of the situation. In addition to providing a general overview, he makes the story very personal by focusing on real towns, real people, and real events. The story of how OxyContin became such a commonly prescribed pain medication through lies and miscommunication and how it lead to it and other opiate medicines lead so many uses into a life of addiction is a powerful and tragic one. I was impressed with all the different angles that the author looked at. He starts with the doctors who first started prescribing the pills which then lead to pill mills. He gives the reader a look at how pills lead many addicts to heroin and the Mexican region that helped supply the drug and create and fill the demand. He looks at the difficulties law enforcement has had trying to stop the epidemic and some of those being held responsible for it's spread. This is a powerful story of a tragedy and the efforts being made to combat it. It's an eye-opening story that needed to be told and it helps that it was researched and told in such a powerful way.
October 4, 2019
Horrifying history of the drugs overrunning America for the last 20 years, starting from the prescription pads of doctors and ending up with a heroin epidemic. Quinones is good at staying non judgemental but showing the effects of the actions of doctors, both scrupulous and profit mongering, drug salesforces, addicts and heroin sellers. It's a frightening story.
He touches a bit of the different reactions to this because of race and class issues -- conservatives who were all in favor of a lock 'em up approach to drug use when they could picture users as black and poor suddenly found value in a more redemptive approach when the addicts were their own white, privileged children.
He touches a bit of the different reactions to this because of race and class issues -- conservatives who were all in favor of a lock 'em up approach to drug use when they could picture users as black and poor suddenly found value in a more redemptive approach when the addicts were their own white, privileged children.
February 11, 2019
I read Dopesick late last year, and I believe she mentions Dreamland in her acknowledgements, so when I saw the YA adaptation at ALA MW I began to read it immediately (as in on the plane ride home). Unfortunately I was hospitalized four days after coming back from ALA, but I finished it this past week while recuperating. These books made me ask the doc for the lowest dose opioid, and I've taken below the instructed dose. I am curious to read the original book but think teens (and adults) should all read this book about the opioid/heroin crisis.
August 6, 2019
I loved this book so much! It was so incredibly easy to read, but at the same time, I learned so much. The reader could become invested in the personal stories told while learning more and more about the facts behind the opiate epidemic. This really opened up my eyes - it was fascinating to learn how these operations were started on a relatively small scale but eventually exploded to consume the entire nation. And the complicity of pharmacists and doctors was both shocking and disturbing. I would definitely recommend this book to others!
August 26, 2019
3 1/2.
Well researched. Fiction pairings.
I’m not sure of the lingering vibe/takeaway if read without discussion.
Well researched. Fiction pairings.
I’m not sure of the lingering vibe/takeaway if read without discussion.
April 9, 2021
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but a bit too long. A definite agenda
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
The author is very careful about building up his agenda over several hundred pages, but he has one just the same.
Narrative Themes:
1. The United States existed in some ideal state in the past.
2. Then an economy in one place was hollowed out by changes in the general economy.
3. Some people somewhere went on disability (instead of unemployment), and physicians readily prescribed pain meds (which were addictive).
4. This act paved the way for harder drugs (black tar, in this case--provided by Mexicans from one particular region of Mexico).
5. The white knight (government) came in to rescue people from being victims of the Big Bad Corporations and the vacuum created by not having enough Virtuous Government.
6. Intelligent Jewish businessman (i.e., the Sackler Brothers) seeing opportunities that nobody had ever seen before.
All of this is wrapped around copious amounts of personal stories and anecdotal evidence.
Cast of Characters (these are general form characters, because the number of people in this book is just *dizzying*):
1. Police detectives
2. Dealers.
3. Junkies
4. Pharmaceutical companies.
5. Scientists/ Corrupt Physicians.
6. Regulatory Agencies.
7. Black people. (And they are put in insofar as they are NOT part of the story. Mexicans don't sell to them, don't buy from them, and don't look for ANY interaction with them. They are not represented among the addicts in this story. And they are not a focus of government policy because they just aren't important/ informed enough as a voting block. p. 45, 144, 163, 261.)
8. (p. 63.) Immigrants coming to the United States to chase their dreams. Specific subgroups of immigrants from one particular place generating an industry.
9. Insurance companies (third parties) that pervert the process of recovery / pain management because they will only pay for what they want to pay for.
Epistemic/ Foundational Themes:
1. Treatment of drug use as a moral issue and not a cost benefit/ hedonistic one. (Drugs can be so many different things to so many different people!)
2. Demonizing of drug companies (that are just businesses who are out to serve their raison d'etre of making money).
3. Characterization of the drug business as just that-- a business. (Predictably, it needs to be set up as a business so that it can be demonized some more.)
4. Government being the last entity to know that something is going wrong. (The drug cartels had a sprawling, razor sharp business model that was developed *long* before any cops knew what was going on.)
5. The private market being much more responsive, adaptive, customer oriented and fast.
6. Decriminalization of drug addiction and treatment thereof as an illness.
One topic that is not taken up at any point in this fairly long book is that prohibition itself is the problem, and that it would be easiest to just not get into this issue at all. (But that then would request that the government become even smaller. It would also entail leaving people to be free to live their lives, even if that life was at somebody who like recreational drugs.)
It has been noted (in this book and others) that drug cartels are smarter and more responsive and better organized than government agencies. And the easiest way to compromise your law enforcement agencies is to set them in conflict with people who are easily able to buy them off.
Another point is that this book does, in some sense, vindicate Donald Trump because a huge part of the market for illegal drugs really does come from Mexico and South America.
I also wonder how big is the scale of this effect. (Portsmouth, Ohio is a town of 20,000 people.)
All in all, I would have to say that this author does a reasonably good job of unwinding the threads of the rich tapestry that are the drug problem in the United States.
Verdict: Recommended, but wait until this goes down to about $1 plus shipping.
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
The author is very careful about building up his agenda over several hundred pages, but he has one just the same.
Narrative Themes:
1. The United States existed in some ideal state in the past.
2. Then an economy in one place was hollowed out by changes in the general economy.
3. Some people somewhere went on disability (instead of unemployment), and physicians readily prescribed pain meds (which were addictive).
4. This act paved the way for harder drugs (black tar, in this case--provided by Mexicans from one particular region of Mexico).
5. The white knight (government) came in to rescue people from being victims of the Big Bad Corporations and the vacuum created by not having enough Virtuous Government.
6. Intelligent Jewish businessman (i.e., the Sackler Brothers) seeing opportunities that nobody had ever seen before.
All of this is wrapped around copious amounts of personal stories and anecdotal evidence.
Cast of Characters (these are general form characters, because the number of people in this book is just *dizzying*):
1. Police detectives
2. Dealers.
3. Junkies
4. Pharmaceutical companies.
5. Scientists/ Corrupt Physicians.
6. Regulatory Agencies.
7. Black people. (And they are put in insofar as they are NOT part of the story. Mexicans don't sell to them, don't buy from them, and don't look for ANY interaction with them. They are not represented among the addicts in this story. And they are not a focus of government policy because they just aren't important/ informed enough as a voting block. p. 45, 144, 163, 261.)
8. (p. 63.) Immigrants coming to the United States to chase their dreams. Specific subgroups of immigrants from one particular place generating an industry.
9. Insurance companies (third parties) that pervert the process of recovery / pain management because they will only pay for what they want to pay for.
Epistemic/ Foundational Themes:
1. Treatment of drug use as a moral issue and not a cost benefit/ hedonistic one. (Drugs can be so many different things to so many different people!)
2. Demonizing of drug companies (that are just businesses who are out to serve their raison d'etre of making money).
3. Characterization of the drug business as just that-- a business. (Predictably, it needs to be set up as a business so that it can be demonized some more.)
4. Government being the last entity to know that something is going wrong. (The drug cartels had a sprawling, razor sharp business model that was developed *long* before any cops knew what was going on.)
5. The private market being much more responsive, adaptive, customer oriented and fast.
6. Decriminalization of drug addiction and treatment thereof as an illness.
One topic that is not taken up at any point in this fairly long book is that prohibition itself is the problem, and that it would be easiest to just not get into this issue at all. (But that then would request that the government become even smaller. It would also entail leaving people to be free to live their lives, even if that life was at somebody who like recreational drugs.)
It has been noted (in this book and others) that drug cartels are smarter and more responsive and better organized than government agencies. And the easiest way to compromise your law enforcement agencies is to set them in conflict with people who are easily able to buy them off.
Another point is that this book does, in some sense, vindicate Donald Trump because a huge part of the market for illegal drugs really does come from Mexico and South America.
I also wonder how big is the scale of this effect. (Portsmouth, Ohio is a town of 20,000 people.)
All in all, I would have to say that this author does a reasonably good job of unwinding the threads of the rich tapestry that are the drug problem in the United States.
Verdict: Recommended, but wait until this goes down to about $1 plus shipping.
Want to read
February 4, 2021From Follett: As an adult book, Sam Quinones's Dreamland took the world by storm, winning the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction and hitting at least a dozen Best Book of the Year lists. Now, adapted for the first time for a young adult audience, this compelling reporting explains the roots of the current opiate crisis. In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Quinones explains how the rise of the prescription drug OxyContin, a miraculous and extremely addictive painkiller pushed by pharmaceutical companies, paralleled the massive influx of black tar heroin--cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel. Introducing a memorable cast of characters--pharmaceutical pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, teens, and parents--Dreamland is a revelatory account of the massive threat facing America and its heartland.
June 18, 2023
(3.5 stars) Dreamland narrates the spread of opiate abuse through America,from the perspective of all parties involved - dealers, addicts & their families, law enforcement, social workers and legislators. It also illustrates the parallel tracks of heroin vs prescription opiate creation & abuse. Some of it may be familiar to you, if you watched the show Dopesick.
Quinones is really adept at taking a complicated knot of information and providing a cohesive narrative of how an epidemic took hold, the depth & breadth of which is truly astounding. The book is super interesting (for some reason the library only had the young adult adaptation??) but found it shallow in some places and didn’t directly address the inherent racism and classism involved. The writing vaguely gestures to it in an unsatisfying way. I also felt like some of the writing was without nuance and didn’t also handle things in a sensitive way. While not perfect, you’ll walk away having learned a lot.
Quinones is really adept at taking a complicated knot of information and providing a cohesive narrative of how an epidemic took hold, the depth & breadth of which is truly astounding. The book is super interesting (for some reason the library only had the young adult adaptation??) but found it shallow in some places and didn’t directly address the inherent racism and classism involved. The writing vaguely gestures to it in an unsatisfying way. I also felt like some of the writing was without nuance and didn’t also handle things in a sensitive way. While not perfect, you’ll walk away having learned a lot.
May 20, 2024
somehow this book manages to focus primarily on white, upper middle class addicts (because who cares about marginalized people who become addicts, right?) yet still finds time to shit on poor addicts (constantly using words like “junkies” and blaming medicaid for peoples addictions — “The proliferation of Medicaid cards led to a proliferation of pills. (…) The Oxy black market might never have spread so quickly had addicts been forced to pay for all those pills themselves.” — such a dangerous idea to spread when medicaid is such an important resource for people in poverty, especially poor disabled people)
i almost abandoned this book less than 50 pages in because of this — and having finished it, i kind of wish i did. i didn’t get as much out of it as i expected to. i’m glad i didn’t waste my time with the original version.
i almost abandoned this book less than 50 pages in because of this — and having finished it, i kind of wish i did. i didn’t get as much out of it as i expected to. i’m glad i didn’t waste my time with the original version.
February 11, 2022
A fascinating story that was told in an easier to digest format for young adults. My school librarian recommended this for me, and I really enjoyed learning about the underside of the opioid epidemic. I already was aware of it, but the details were really interesting. I think the YA format definitely shows up as a weakness- content been edited out that the book to the point where it sometimes read as choppy and overly simplified, especially when discussing contextually important racial topics. I got the feeling that maybe the full version of the book was able to flesh the topics concerning race out more and lend them more sensitivity and that that nuance was just lost in this condensed version. Thats my hope, anyways!
August 29, 2020
I think my new favorite genre is narrative nonfiction. Dreamland takes the opiate epidemic and makes it real with human stories.
This book made me see the hypocrisy, though, of how Black and White addicts are/were treated differently. The author Sam Quinones talks about it explicitly - very briefly, but it was clear while reading the differences between the treatment of Black and White even though the book focused solely on White addicts. It’s amazing how our country rallied around White addicts and became much softer on crime, but Black addicts are still looked at as needing tough on crime laws.
Young adult adaptation: I’d recommend 7th grade and up.
This book made me see the hypocrisy, though, of how Black and White addicts are/were treated differently. The author Sam Quinones talks about it explicitly - very briefly, but it was clear while reading the differences between the treatment of Black and White even though the book focused solely on White addicts. It’s amazing how our country rallied around White addicts and became much softer on crime, but Black addicts are still looked at as needing tough on crime laws.
Young adult adaptation: I’d recommend 7th grade and up.
May 3, 2025
good book. it in a way helped me understand how the far-right media has used drug cartels to demonize immigrants of all kinds, all while red states refused to increase funding for rehabilitation for addicts. it’s also a shame that nothing was done about the crack epidemic because it was happening to poor african americans, but that because it was middle class white people who were being addicted to these opioids, it became a national emergency. not saying that one was worse than another, i just think the response shows how evil and racist our country is. i honestly wish my school made me read the non young adult version tho.
6/10
6/10
Read
February 26, 2022A fascinating and sobering read, although with a bigger focus on the Xalisco heroin cartel than I was expecting and less on the pills; though pill mills and the over-prescription of opiates are discussed, it's not the focal point I expected, and the Sacklers are never mentioned by name at all, which seems like a strange omission for a book on the subject (even if they're not the focus, I'd expect a mention). Still, informative and engaging, with a focus on the epidemic's younger victims that will likely hit home for teen readers.
May 6, 2025
This book was eye opening. I learned an incredible amount about the opioid and in turn, the heroin epidemic that has plagued the U.S. for years. This book does a great job of blending in true stories with facts surrounding the origins of this epidemic with Purdue Pharma and the Mexican heroin trade. This book is hard hitting but difficult to put down. It’s a difficult topic but I think everyone should read this to better understand this part of our nations history.
December 3, 2025
Far beyond the crimes of Purdue Pharma, this is a well-written, deeply researched, and clearly presented book. Users, dealers, and small-time shoplifters all went to jail — yet no one from Purdue served a single day, despite the company helping create a long-lasting epidemic of death, addiction, and shattered families. Once again, capitalism reveals its cruelty and hypocrisy. There is so much to learn from this horrific chapter in American history, yet I doubt any of the lessons will truly stick. 9.7M pills filled in a town of 80k. give that some thought.
August 3, 2020
An incredible account of the rise of America's opioid epidemic. The book is well-written and well researched. An extensive post-story section at the end provides snapshots of people and places contained in the book, discussion questions, author's note, and bibliography. A must-read for understanding the drug crisis and where America is today.
April 7, 2022
I feel most should read this book, applies to all ages, all parts of our country. I was overwhelmed by the true epidemic, lives ruined & many lost. Awful heartaches created for loved ones.
This book was a suggestion from my college-age granddaughter. She had it as a required reading in one of her courses.
The author writes well & I looked forward to the read each time I sat down with this book.
This book was a suggestion from my college-age granddaughter. She had it as a required reading in one of her courses.
The author writes well & I looked forward to the read each time I sat down with this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews