7/5/2023 0 Comments Dopesick by Beth Macy![]() The US photographer Nan Goldin has campaigned against the Sackler family, the principal owners of Purdue Pharma, which makes Ox圜ontin. They attest to the unprecedented scale and devastating effect of America’s ongoing opioid epidemic on middle-class as well as poor rural communities, many of which are still grappling with the idea that addiction has taken hold of their all-American small towns. ![]() More often than not, these tangled narratives also speak of shame, stigma, denial and harrowing suffering – both for the addicted and their immediate circle. ![]() “The first time Ed Bisch heard the word ‘Ox圜ontin’,” writes Beth Macy, “his son was dead from it.”ĭopesick is threaded through with similar stories of loss and bewilderment: sad stories told by grieving parents and siblings, angry stories told by activists, and stoical stories told by police officers and local representatives who have witnessed entire communities laid waste by addiction. When a bewildered Bisch asked what had happened, one of them replied, “Oxy” – shorthand for Ox圜ontin, the opioid-based painkiller that Eddie had overdosed on. By the time Bisch made it home, paramedics had given up the fight to save his son’s life. ![]() ![]() She had just found her 18-year-old brother, Eddie, unconscious and turning blue in the bathroom of their house in suburban Philadelphia. I n February 2001, Ed Bisch, a middle-aged American IT worker, received a frantic call from his daughter. ![]()
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