Book Review: Dreamland, By Sam Quinones

Dreamland, by Sam Quinones, opened my eyes to America’s opiate epidemic. The book began discussing a man named Enrique, who illegally came to the U.S. going by the name of Alejandro. Although Enrique told others that he did not grow up to be a heroin trafficker, he was one. On page 15, Quinones went on to discuss the Boston collaborative drug surveillance program. This program holds hospital records in 4 databases. I found it very interesting that 12,000 patients were treated with opiates before 1979 and that only 4 of these patients became addicted. This information really makes me wonder about how often the patients were prescribed to take the opiates, for how long, and the dosage of the opiates. Although this information was not reported, I am interested to see how these results would vary today. This directly relates to Quinones’ chapter called All from the Same Town. It was in this chapter that Quinones focused on the town of Huntington, West Virginia. The story of Adam was one that really

Also, I found it important that the drug traffickers all had the last name Tejeda. They explained that the black tar was moldable like clay, which made it easier to shape. Quinones moved on to discuss Dr. Vincent dole who discovered methadone for addicts. The unique property of methadone is that unlike heroin which demands high doses throughout the day, methadone was the only opiate whose addicts did not demand high doses. Additionally, Dr. Dole emphasized group therapy, 12 step meetings, and as a last resort methadone. Methadone worked to stabilize an addict and helped re-establish relationships. In the first part of Dreamland, Quinone worked to explain what heroin is and how it effects many lives. Quinone’s writing is very fascinating because he incorporates real addicts, police officers, and doctors in order to present his readers with a full understanding of the