This Is Ohio, Jack Shuler
This Is Ohio, Jack Shuler
List: $22.00 | Sale: $15.40
Club: $11.00

This Is Ohio
The Overdose Crisis and the Front Lines of a New America

Author: Jack Shuler

Narrator: Miles Meili

Unabridged: 8 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Scribd Audio

Published: 11/02/2021


Synopsis

For readers of Dopesick and Dreamland, journalist Jack Shuler explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care in this “insightful look at how the issues in Ohio affect the rest of the country” (Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year).

Tainted drug supplies, inadequate civic responses, and prevailing negative opinions about people who use drugs, the poor, and those struggling with mental health issues lead to thousands of preventable deaths each year while politicians are slow to adopt effective policies. Putting themselves at great personal risk (and often breaking the law to do so), the brave men and women profiled in This Is Ohio are mounting a grassroots effort to combat ineffective and often incorrect ideas about addiction and instead focus on saving lives through commonsense harm reduction policies.

Opioids are the current face of addiction, but as Shuler shows, the crisis in our midst is one that has long been fostered by income inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs across the Rust Belt, and lack of access to health care. What is playing out in Ohio today isn’t only about opioids, but rather a decades–long economic and sociological shift in small towns all across the United States. It’s also about a larger culture of stigma at the heart of how we talk about addiction. What happens in Ohio will have ramifications felt across the nation and for decades to come.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bob on April 12, 2020

Summary: A narrative account of the overdose crisis in the United States, focusing on Newark, Ohio, a former industrial center, advocating for harm reduction and the involvement of drug users in policy decisions. The events narrated in this book occurred in a town not forty miles from where I live in......more

Goodreads review by Heather on July 01, 2020

This book will make you rethink the addiction crisis and what we should do about it, and may therefore be the most important thing you read this year. Thoughtful reporting that puts real individuals and their stories back at the center of what has become a dehumanizing political issue. Shuler paints......more

Goodreads review by Gordon on November 08, 2020

Both a personal and sophisticated exploration of the overdose crisis - this book takes us through a journey where ideas about what this crisis isevolve through the course of the book. At one point, in the middle of the book, the author is 'corrected' when he uses the term 'addict' on a phone call.......more

Goodreads review by Sylvia on February 10, 2021

Not an easy read by any means. I had to confront my own misconceptions around addiction. I think most people should read this, even if they don't live in Ohio. Full review here......more

Goodreads review by Teri on September 30, 2020

A side of my hometown I've rarely encountered. It's difficult to hear about the suffering of so many people in town. This book challenged my assumptions about drug addiction and poverty, and I hope to be better for the challenge.......more