The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses." Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. Its a story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single wide trailer, with no assets beyond...

The use and abuse of opioids-from illegal ones such as heroin to legal prescription painkillers-is a problem that has grown in scale nationwide and caused great concern among educators, families, law enforcement, government officials, and the public at large. This book offers a jumping-off point for youth dealing with opioid abuse in their lives, whether it is their own addiction or coping with opioid abuse among family members or friends. It empowers...

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, journalist Beth Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question--why her only son died--and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. The...

Prescription opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone are highly effective for treating chronic pain, but they also have severe side effects, including significant potential for abuse. The misuse and abuse of prescription painkillers has become a serious global problem, affecting the health and economic welfare of societies worldwide. Fueling the problem of prescription opioid abuse are pill mills medical operations run by unethical or untrained...

A comprehensive portrait of a uniquely American epidemic--devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions - The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. - Journeying through lives and communities wrecked...

In the aftermath of major surgery, sixteen-year-old Eve struggles with pain, grief, and guilt while becoming increasingly dependent on pain medication, revisiting memories of her best friend, and exploring a potential romance. Everything was fine before. Eve and Lidia could hide their physical differences inside goofy Burger Hut costumes, make each other laugh, just hang together. Everything is different now. Cut open, rearranged, stapled shut, Eve...

"Eli North is not okay. His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job he can hold down is with the local sheriff's department. And that's only because the sheriff is his mother--and she's overwhelmed with small town Shaky Lake's dwindling budget and the fallout from the opioid epidemic. The Northwoods of Wisconsin may be a vacationer's...

"Trace's relationship with his older brother Will becomes increasingly complicated after Will suffers a traumatic brain injury and becomes addicted to pain pills"-- Trace Reynolds has always looked up to his brother, mostly because Will, who is five years older, has never looked down on him. When Will was knocked out cold during a football game, resulting in a brain injury, everything changed. Sixteen months later their family is still living under...