A bioethicist's memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal exposes the American health care system's failures at managing the use of opioids for pain relief and reveals the lack of resources and structures to handle the nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction. "A bioethicist's eloquent and riveting memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal -- a harrowing personal reckoning and clarion call for change not only for government but medicine itself,...

Chronicles America's more than twenty-year struggle with opioid addiction, from the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, through the spread of addiction in distressed communities in Central Appalachia, to the current national crisis.

Nick Heller, private spy, exposes secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. At the funeral of his good friend Sean, an army buddy who once saved Nick's life and had struggled with opioid addiction since returning wounded from war, a stranger approaches Nick with a job. The woman is a member of the Kimball family, whose immense fortune was built on opiates. Now she wants to become a whistleblower, exposing evidence that Kimball Pharmaceutical...