The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth

by Sam Quinones

As I traveled and spoke with neuroscientists, it seemed that one way of thinking of America in the last four decades is that we gradually surrendered—collectively, as a culture—to the brain’s reward pathway. Our prosperity allowed us this luxury. We could follow the nucleus accumbens and the pursuit of dopamine and pleasure. This was one way of understanding the Opioid Era in America. Our epidemic of opioid addiction was just an extreme expression of a culture in which, in so many ways, Me won the battle over Us.