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

by Sam Quinones

This made more sense as I read what neuroscience can now tell us: that every human brain has capacity for addiction. Isolation is part of why some people get addicted and some do not. So was trauma. Abuse, rape, neglect, PTSD, a parent’s drug use were as unspoken in America as addiction and as prevalent. The epidemic was revealing this. I also connected the epidemic to consumer marketing of legal addictive stuffs: sugar, video games, social media, gambling.

Later, some people would claim that the opioid addiction epidemic was only getting attention because the great majority of its victims were middle-class White people. That was true. The other truth was that the plague hid for years because so many of its victims were middle-class Whites. Families seared by the loss also had to navigate the shame. They covered up, mortified at how their loved ones had died, afraid to stain their memories. Newspaper obituaries reported that a twenty-seven-year-old died of a “heart attack”; a middle-aged brother “died suddenly” at home. Amid this nationwide silence the plague festered, metastasized, and, like a virus, took on a life of its own.

It’s a remarkable thing: the drug enhances those memories that would lead us to our doom, while the brain, which evolved all the weapons to keep us alive, can barely muster a defense.

Our revolution in neuroscience research has shown that around 30 percent of people have a genetic disposition for addiction. But no matter what a person’s genetic disposition, no one gets addicted to drugs she hasn’t tried.

In the world of opiate-addicted brains, an overdose is not a warning; it’s an advertisement.