Dreamland Themes

Pharmaceutical companies did not cause the painkiller addiction crisis in a vacuum, but took advantage of a well-intentioned desire amongst doctors for a “Holy Grail” of pain treatment: a pill that could end suffering simply and free of addictive side effects. American patients wanted painkillers because they were in pain, and their doctors wanted to prescribe painkillers because they felt it was their moral obligation to help those who had suffered for so long. Prior…

Dreamland details the rise of black tar heroin in the United States as the result of a distribution group consisting of business-savvy Mexican immigrants alongside Americans’ growing addiction to OxyContin. Quinones creates a parallel between the Mexican distribution group’s heroin trade and the United States pharmaceutical industry, suggesting that the opiate epidemic was the result of both organizations’ innovative and successful business ventures. His decision to focus on the business side of the opiate epidemic…

The title of Quinones’s book alludes to his position that a strengthened sense of community can correct the ills inflicted on individuals and society at large by the American opiate epidemic. Dreamland refers to the now-demolished community swimming pool in Portsmouth, Ohio, a town located on the Ohio River that the epidemic hit particularly hard. Prior to the pool’s demolition in the mid-1990s—and in happier and more prosperous times—Dreamland served as a place…