Fentanyl: What I Got Wrong
In celebration of the 2-year anniversary of the publication of Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals About Us (Herald, 2019), I’m diving into a series of things that I got wrong. Or, in some cases, things I would have written about differently if I knew what I know now.
I recently had the chance to sit down and record an audio version of the book. And it is a humbling experience to wince at some of your own words as you hear yourself read them out loud. Luckily, I also have the power to change those words and was able to revise that version of the book.
The first big thing I got wrong is how I wrote about the drug fentanyl.
What I Wrote
In 2015 I read about a man a few miles away from my home in New Hampshire who had been found dead with two fentanyl patches in his stomach. I was shocked. I had been on fentanyl patches. They had seemed so safe and innocuous in their box by my bedside. I wrote:
New Hampshire, often tied with Ohio for the second highest drug overdose rates per capita (West Virginia is number one), rose to the top when it came to fentanyl overdoses while I was writing this book. Hillsborough County, where I grew up, is the epicenter. In the time between my release from the hospital and my return to New Hampshire, a period of six years, fentanyl overdoses increased 1,600…
