Dopesick

by

Beth Macy

Tess Henry Character Analysis

Tess Henry is a young mother from the Hidden Valley region of Virginia and the daughter of Patricia Mehrmann. Tess first begins telling her life story to Beth Macy in 2015. The daughter of a local surgeon and nurse, as well as a star high school athlete, she eventually develops a $200-a-day heroin addiction in college after a routine visit to urgent care ends with her getting an opioid prescription. Like many young addicts, her good health helps disguise her addiction for a while, but eventually it becomes impossible to hide, particularly after she turns to theft to help pay for her addiction. She is caught attempting to rob a hardware store and gets sent to jail where she learns that she is in the second trimester of pregnancy. Although the birth of her son initially helps her center her life around a new goal, eventually Tess is back to using, straining her relationship with her family and starting a downward spiral. Jamie Waldrop tries to offer help to Tess through the Hope Initiative and even author Beth Macy blurs the lines between journalist and subject when she takes Tess to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. But despite brief periods of wanting treatment (often right after a trip to the psych ward), Tess seems unable to break her cycle of addiction. Eventually, she ends up going to a treatment facility in Nevada, where she seems to make progress, but once again, she just ends up back to her old habits in Las Vegas. The day after Christmas, Patricia gets the shocking news that Tess has been murdered in Las Vegas. Tess represents the complexities and contradictions of life as an addict. As the course of her life shows, although she had good intentions to be a better mother and daughter, she also frequently acted in ways that seemed to be against her own best interests—all motivated by her addiction. Macy tells Tess’s story to explore and humanize the tragic side of the opioid epidemic: how even young healthy people with good intentions and a support network are sometimes unable to win their battles against addiction.

Tess Henry Quotes in Dopesick

The Dopesick quotes below are all either spoken by Tess Henry or refer to Tess Henry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Poverty as an Obstacle to Recovery  Theme Icon
).
Chapter 10 Quotes

Tess was nearly seven months pregnant when she left jail in June 2015. For a month, she lived with her mom and tried to make a go of it with her boyfriend, the baby’s father—“disastrous,” Patricia and Tess agreed—before they found a private treatment center two hours away that would take Tess during her final month of pregnancy. Private insurance covered most of the $20,000 bill while her dad paid the $6,500 deductible, using the remainder of Tess’s college-savings fund. The Life Center of Galax was one of the few Virginia facilities that accepted patients on medication-assisted treatment (methadone or buprenorphine). Tess was now taking Subutex, a form of buprenorphine then recommended for some pregnant mothers. (Suboxone is typically the preferred MAT for opioid users because it also contains naloxone, an opiate blocker; Subutex, which is buprenorphine with no added blocker, was then considered safer for the baby but more likely to be abused by the mom.)

Related Characters: Tess Henry, Patricia Mehrmann
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

I just left goodwill, can you please transfer $4 so I can get a pack of cigarettes please?

Related Characters: Jordan “Joey” Gilbert (speaker), Tess Henry, Patricia Mehrmann
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

Tess was still homeless, and another week passed before she called Patricia with an address via a borrowed phone, possibly belonging to a current or former pimp. “Are you in danger?” her mom asked, and Tess claimed she was not, repeating a line she often said: “I’m a soldier, Mom. I’ll be fine.

“Yes, love.” Patricia responded. “But sometimes even soldiers fall.”

Related Characters: Tess Henry (speaker), Patricia Mehrmann (speaker), Beth Macy
Page Number: 304
Explanation and Analysis:

It was January 2, Tess’s birthday. She would’ve been twenty-nine.

Patricia tucked the treasures of her daughter’s life inside the vest—a picture of her boy and one of his cotton onesies that was Tess’s favorite, some strands of Koda’s hair, and a sand dollar.

Related Characters: Tess Henry, Patricia Mehrmann
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Dopesick LitChart as a printable PDF.
Dopesick PDF

Tess Henry Quotes in Dopesick

The Dopesick quotes below are all either spoken by Tess Henry or refer to Tess Henry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Poverty as an Obstacle to Recovery  Theme Icon
).
Chapter 10 Quotes

Tess was nearly seven months pregnant when she left jail in June 2015. For a month, she lived with her mom and tried to make a go of it with her boyfriend, the baby’s father—“disastrous,” Patricia and Tess agreed—before they found a private treatment center two hours away that would take Tess during her final month of pregnancy. Private insurance covered most of the $20,000 bill while her dad paid the $6,500 deductible, using the remainder of Tess’s college-savings fund. The Life Center of Galax was one of the few Virginia facilities that accepted patients on medication-assisted treatment (methadone or buprenorphine). Tess was now taking Subutex, a form of buprenorphine then recommended for some pregnant mothers. (Suboxone is typically the preferred MAT for opioid users because it also contains naloxone, an opiate blocker; Subutex, which is buprenorphine with no added blocker, was then considered safer for the baby but more likely to be abused by the mom.)

Related Characters: Tess Henry, Patricia Mehrmann
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

I just left goodwill, can you please transfer $4 so I can get a pack of cigarettes please?

Related Characters: Jordan “Joey” Gilbert (speaker), Tess Henry, Patricia Mehrmann
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

Tess was still homeless, and another week passed before she called Patricia with an address via a borrowed phone, possibly belonging to a current or former pimp. “Are you in danger?” her mom asked, and Tess claimed she was not, repeating a line she often said: “I’m a soldier, Mom. I’ll be fine.

“Yes, love.” Patricia responded. “But sometimes even soldiers fall.”

Related Characters: Tess Henry (speaker), Patricia Mehrmann (speaker), Beth Macy
Page Number: 304
Explanation and Analysis:

It was January 2, Tess’s birthday. She would’ve been twenty-nine.

Patricia tucked the treasures of her daughter’s life inside the vest—a picture of her boy and one of his cotton onesies that was Tess’s favorite, some strands of Koda’s hair, and a sand dollar.

Related Characters: Tess Henry, Patricia Mehrmann
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis: