The United States of opiates - The Rider Newspaper

Opiate addiction and abuse is an increasingly problematic issue plaguing the United States.

On Thursday, Sam Quinones, a freelance journalist and award-winning author will be in the Edinburg campus Ballroom at 6:30 p.m. to give a keynote address and sign copies of his acclaimed nonfiction book “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.”

The “Dreamland: Evening with Sam Quinones” event will be presented by the UTRGV Collegiate Recovery Program, School of Medicine and School of Rehabilitation Services and Counseling.

In 2015, opioids were involved in 33,091 deaths and opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, nearly half of all U.S. opioid deaths involve a prescription opioid. More than 15,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids in 2015.

Kristina Canfield, program coordinator of the Collegiate Recovery Program at UTRGV, said overprescribing painkillers such as OxyContin is a problem in the pharmaceutical industry.

“There’s a lot of evidence that shows big pharmaceutical companies really flooded parts of our country with an outrageous number of narcotic painkillers such as OxyContin,” Canfield said. “In my experience in working in inpatient treatment for a long time to being a part of the advocacy movement is that we overprescribe them. We don’t have a lot of medical professionals that have the knowledge about addiction yet and we’re working to change that.”

Quinones has covered crime and immigration while working as a journalist. He worked for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2014. “Dreamland” dives deep into the world of heroin and painkillers in the United States.

“I began to realize there’s this unseen particle in one plant that has evolved to become absolutely essential to the dominant mammal on the planet, the opium poppy I’m talking about,” Quinones said in an interview Nov. 7 on the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast. “Within that opium poppy, there is a morphine molecule and within that molecule we have the possibility of heaven and hell, freedom and complete enslavement.”

When opiate overdoses strike, they strike hard. In August 2016, officials in Huntington, W.Va., treated 26 patients who overdosed on heroin in just a five-hour window.

Canfield said opiate addiction affects everybody involved, addicted or not.

“Statistically, everyone at some point will be affected by this whether or not they’re the person addicted,” Canfield said. “Addiction is really about community and Sam’s book really addresses that, the lack of community that really allowed the opiate crisis to take over. His ideas are that we have to come together as a community, everybody, whether or not you’ve been touched by addiction yet.”

Quinones said the morphine molecule in opium poppy can lead to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

“This [morphine] molecule could create the most blessed relief, freedom from the most tortured pain and it could also be the source of the greatest debasement, the greatest enslavement we’ve ever known,” Quinones said during the podcast.

“Dreamland” was named one of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of 2015 and The Guardian’s Best Book We Read All Year.

Quinones will sign copies of “Dreamland” after his lecture.