Style Scavenger

Quinones continually uses breaks in his sentences throughout the book to provide relatable information to the first thought and provide emphasize on the sentence. This makes the reader more aware of the point being made and slows their reading down so they can absorb more of the information being said without skimming over it,

“A half hour from my house, the town of Simi Valley agonized over a spate of opiate overdose deaths--Eleven in a year.” (303)

“Low crime and high fatal overdose rates--this was the new American paradigm” (303)

“The Oscar-Winning actor--a father of three--had checked into rehab the previous Mayfor ten days,and then, pronouncing himself sober again, left to resume a hectic film schedule.” (304)

Quinones also use many dependent clauses strung together by commas to provide details and enhance the story. It also bring attention to the details the author wants you to focus on as you read.

“The JCAHO was now promoting multidisciplinary approaches to pain, including more healthy behavior, psychological support, and non-opiate medications, along with education of patients on the addiction risks of opiates.” (306)

“The clinics included physical therapy, acupuncture, massage, and swimming-pool therapy, as well as social workers and psychological counselors to help vets suffering chronic pain also find work and housing and resolve marital problems.” (308)

“He slouched in his easy chair, skullcap over gray hair, smiling hazily through the anemia, a once-handsome face now pale and without the bronze gleam it once possessed .” (316)

We see Pathos in this passage as Quinones shares the story of one of the drug merchants. He describes the image of the man, after many years, worn out and with no strength to go back to Xalisco. We see the irony of this man trying to help many families, in Xalisco, while hurting many teens and their families, in America. With years he ended up just like his customers, “slouched, gray and weak”. He accepts the consequences that came with his actions, knowing that at the time it was a necessity to provide for this family and himself, but there was no intention of hurting other people. Quinones shows the reality of the lives of these drug merchants and the risky decisions they need to make.

“Perhaps not, Adler allowed. Morphine, he said, a great metaphor for life. “The bad effects of morphine act to minimize the use of the drug which is a good thing. There are people born without pain receptors. [Living without pain] is a horrible thing. They die young because pain is the greatest signaling mechanism we have.” Adler believed the lesson of the last fifteen years was that the conception of pain needed to change. “I don’t think you’re going to fine one treatment for pain,” he said. “You don’t use one drug to treat all cancers; if you do it’s because you don't know how to treat [each cancer] specifically I think where we’re headed is to find the most effective treatments for different kinds of pain. Chronic back pain, neuropathic pain- we just don’t know enough about them. That may be because pain isn’t a single disease. (Pg. 313)

In this passage we see logos, people typically would rather not feel pain and bnumb, but people who are born without pain receptors are put more at risk. When people feel pain doctors can normally diagnose the patient and what they should do to get rid of that pain. Without feeling pain, people don’t know their limits, when they've had enough. Although it’s simple to think about, if you were to ask people,  they would probably chose to be numb. This passage also shows pathos putting you in the shoes of those kids, hoping there would soon be a drug to treat or stop their pain completely. Some who can’t feel the drugs harming their body and having to test all kinds of drugs hoping it will help them and their addiction. Adler being a professor of pharmacology at Temple University made this theory and helped Quinones better understand the perspectives when trying to find new drugs that won’t lead to addiction, this showing Ethos.

In the last section of our book, the author mainly focuses on the aspect of the opiate epidemic that has spread rampantly throughout the middle-class. Before the epidemic largely affected the white middle class, heroin was a stigmatized “back alley drug.” No one in the middle class suspected anyone they had relationships with could be a victim of this horrible drug. But as time progressed, the switch from prescription opiates to black tar heroin was becoming more and more common. Many teenagers and young adults became addicts and often overdosed. Heroin went from being a drug you only saw in destitute neighborhoods to the suburbs. The victims went from poor addicts that lived in crack houses to being your “neighbor’s kid.” One cause of this epidemic in the middle class was throughout high school sports. Many football players who were in high school were liberally prescribed and more often handed prescription opiates to deal with sports injuries. They were given these very frequently so they could get back out there and play. Many of these athletes and football players became addicted to their prescription drugs and eventually switched over to black tar heroin. This rise in opiate addiction in the middle class was largely responsible for sparking the different sets of legislation and attention to the opiate crisis in America. The author also taps into the idea that the recovery process is a long journey. It takes years of dedication to become completely clean and to fight the urge to use. It’s also not a process you do alone. Another topic of discussion in this section was the system of the Xalisco boys. Quinones examined the Xalisco system and how it continued to operate. Illegals that were caught dealing were often just deported so the Xalisco boys didn’t really fear getting caught. The U.S. slowly started to catch onto their system by doing drug raids. Overall this section focused a lot on middle class addiction and its effects and how the police are trying to crack down on heroin dealers.

Key Points:

Appeals to Pathos and Logos are prevalent throughout the book and this section. Pathos appeals are seen in the stories of drug addicts and their families, specifically Matt Shoonover and his parents, who are reeling from his opiate overdose. These stories also serve as a cautionary tale to people reading this book about the harm and pain opiates can bring you and your loved ones. Quinones’s use of logos includes dry statistics that don’t do much other than show an example of his point or to try and shock the reader. For example, “The drug court […]  boasted a recidivism rate of only 20 percent among those who finished the treatment program; compare that with over 60 percent leaving prison.” He uses this in the context of if courts and their rehabilitation programs are having a bigger impact on the opiate crisis than prisons.

The tenses Quinones uses are important to the context of the book, although there is an overall hopeful tone and there are plenty of cautionary tales, much of the book is in past tense. This makes sense when you consider that the main purpose of this book is how the opiate crisis, what factors caused it, and who’s at fault. This book can easily be used as an example of what not to do in the future, but overall the tenses have a more scientific feel.

In the final part of our story Sam Quinones is explaining more of the personal side of drug dealing and how these parents are being to rebuild their lives and raise awareness for other parents who are going through the same thing. He also expands more on how the police are trying to shut down the heroin and opiate drug deals. 

The most important part of this final section is the fact that Portsmouth, Ohio was rebuilding their shoelace factory. By starting to rebuild this they were able to get people jobs and make Portsmouth more presentable. Addicts were starting to find refuge in this town because people were becoming more educated about the fact that addiction is a disease. More and more rehab clinics were popping up and more and more people were getting clean. And with the more people getting clean the town is starting to become the town it use to be. DreamLand. 

Throughout the whole novel Sam Quinones keeps taking us back to Portsmouth, Ohio and we are able to watch the town hit rock bottom but from rock bottom they are able to rebuild and become a new town.