This Is Ohio: The Overdose Crisis and the Front Lines of a New America

by Jack Shuler

Overview

Winner of the 2019-2020 Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism
Winner of the 2020 Richard Frisbie Award for Adult Nonfiction from the Society of Midland Authors

For readers of Dopesick and Dreamland, journalist Jack Shuler explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care in this “insightful look at how the issues in Ohio affect the rest of the country” (Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year).

Tainted drug supplies, inadequate civic responses, and prevailing negative opinions about people who use drugs, the poor, and those struggling with mental health issues lead to thousands of preventable deaths each year while politicians are slow to adopt effective policies. Putting themselves at great personal risk (and often breaking the law to do so), the brave men and women profiled in This Is Ohio are mounting a grassroots effort to combat ineffective and often incorrect ideas about addiction and instead focus on saving lives through commonsense harm reduction policies.

Opioids are the current face of addiction, but as Shuler shows, the crisis in our midst is one that has long been fostered by income inequality, the loss of manufacturing jobs across the Rust Belt, and lack of access to health care. What is playing out in Ohio today isn’t only about opioids, but rather a decades–long economic and sociological shift in small towns all across the United States. It’s also about a larger culture of stigma at the heart of how we talk about addiction. What happens in Ohio will have ramifications felt across the nation and for decades to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640093560
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jack Shuler is the author of three books, including The Thirteenth Turn: A History of the Noose. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, Pacific Standard, Christian Science Monitor, 100 Days in Appalachia, and Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He is chair of the narrative journalism program at Denison University. He lives in Ohio. Find out more at jackshulerauthor.com.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Prologue: The Corner 3

Part I The Heart of It All

Spring 2016-Summer 2017

1 Rusted Belts and Think Tanks 21

2 The Cavalry's Not Coming 33

3 Hope Shot 48

4 Semicolons 64

Part 2 Movement

Fall 2017-Spring 2019

5 Swimming Upstream 73

6 Systems of Care 82

7 None of Us Are Bad People 91

8 The Churn 106

9 Any Positive Change 116

10 The Foot of the Mountain 125

11 The Person Next to You 133

12 Punk Rock Harm Reduction 143

13 Rainbows and Unicorns 150

Part 3 Nothing About Us Without Us

Spring-Summer 2019

14 Beyond Rat Park 167

15 Moments of Recognition 177

16 Corners 192

17 "Every Overdose Is a Policy Failure" 207

18 Worth Our Keep 226

Postscript 240

Acknowledgments 245

A Note About Sources 249

Notes 251

Editorial Reviews

05/18/2020

Journalist Shuler (The Thirteenth Turn) offers a harrowing look at the opioid epidemic in the Rust Belt community of Licking County, Ohio. Writing with great empathy, he documents the daily lives of opioid addicts, as well as the work of community activists struggling to reduce overdose deaths and limit the spread of hepatitis and other ill effects of drug abuse through harm reduction initiatives. Shuler categorizes the opioid epidemic as a human rights problem, describes the “war on drugs” as a grievous mistake, and focuses more on identifying the systemic causes of addiction—including income inequality, unemployment, and inadequate medical care—than exposing the role of overprescribing doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Despite the grim nature of the topic, he offers a dash of hope and inspiration in profiles of grassroots efforts to repair the social fabric of Licking County, and in his own willingness to get involved by taking addicts to meetings, visiting homeless camps, and learning how to administer anti-overdose medication. This impressively researched and deeply felt account does a devastating job of personalizing the failures of U.S. drug policy. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of the 2019-2020 Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism
Winner of the 2020 Richard Frisbie Award for Adult Nonfiction from the Society of Midland Authors

“With the opioid epidemic raging rampant in Ohio, Shuler gets into the nitty–gritty of the crisis . . . An insightful look at how issues in Ohio affect the rest of the country.” —Laura Hanrahan, Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

“A book that sets itself apart from the pack with a focus on both harm reduction and the larger economic factors that Shuler argues comprise crucial yet oft–overlooked context . . . Shuler holds readers’ interest with a colorful cast of activists who are on the ground in Ohio today, pushing back against the fentanyl–driven overdose crisis and the wider drug war . . . In the sort of middle–America town where news reports too often only focus on the bodies, Shuler has found a gang of heroes who have taken matters into their own hands.” —Travis Lupick, Filter Magazine

“Jack Shuler’s new book reveals courageous men and women combating the overdose crisis in Newark, Ohio, and makes a case for progressive harm reduction policies . . . This is Ohio isn’t a depressing book. It’s a portrait of men and women who, instead of waiting for seats at the table, made their own tables and pulled up their own chairs and began working for change.” —Joel Oliphint, Columbus Alive

"Jack Shuler’s This Is Ohio provides a perspective on the opioid epidemic that is refreshingly focused on those working on the ground to save lives and change policy . . . He effectively draws us into the lives of the people he describes, and in doing so he calls attention to the gaps and shortcomings that are rooted in policy and prejudice, as well as in the profit motive." —Paul Draus, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

“This impressively researched and deeply felt account does a devastating job of personalizing the failures of U.S. drug policy.” —Publishers Weekly

“Another alarming report from the front lines of the opioid epidemic . . . This book should be shelved next to Beth Macy’s Dopesick and Sam Quinones’ Dreamland . . . Full of grim yet important statistics and vignettes as well as a few sensible solutions—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] profoundly humanizing investigation . . . The commitment, tenacity, and empathy of the users, activists, and advocates Shuler meets is a stark corrective to the disdain and dehumanization typical of policy and practice in this area. The title forcefully claims this story for Ohio, a statistical center, but addiction reaches all places, and this book is strongly recommended for readers anywhere who are interested in systemic change and the power of the grassroots.” —Library Journal

“Jack Shuler takes us to the heart of America’s overdose crisis with clear–eyed storytelling and empathic warmth for the ordinary Americans fighting against the economic and cultural abandonment that have left too many behind, or locked up. A wrenching but life–affirming book.” —Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black

“A riveting and disturbing look at America, but altogether necessary. This is a much–needed examination of a crisis and decline that has gone on far too long without reckoning. An absolute must–read.” —Jared Yates Sexton, author of American Rule

“This Is Ohio is such a good book because Jack Shuler listens so well. With clarity and heart, he tells an empowering story about the nation’s overdose crisis in the voices of the women and men who are facing it head–on. These are voices calling not just for attention but for action, and they are offering solutions that come from hard–won experience. Shuler asks us to listen, just as he did. It’s the least we can do.” —Peter Slevin, author of Michelle Obama: A Life

“Careful. Vivid. Empathic. Jack Shuler's This Is Ohio will challenge many readers’ assumptions about addiction, poverty, and the overdose crisis in not just Ohio, but across America. Much ink has been spilled investigating Big Pharma and how their greed sparked an epidemic of addiction. But This Is Ohio makes the uncomfortable argument that the crisis facing communities has roots that run far deeper than one industry's wanton greed and corruption. Shuler's book shows that addressing the opioid crisis also means addressing the economy, health care, inequality, and stigma. It means restoring the meaning of community and strengthening social bonds that not only keep us alive, but make our lives worth living.” —Zachary Siegel, journalist and co–host of Narcotica

From the Publisher

08/01/2020

This profoundly humanizing investigation surveys the opioid addiction and overdose crisis as experienced in the Ohio community of Newark, east of Columbus. Shuler (The Thirteenth Turn) teaches at nearby Denison University and travels through the Ohio epicenter of the opioid crisis, from Dayton to Portsmouth. He meets and walks with many people who use drugs, and many more who care about and advocate for them. Like the meetings, events, shelters, and grassroots service projects he visits, Shuler's book gives the opportunity for people to speak up and be heard. A tremendous stigma is attached to drug use, yet users are capable, productive, human, and need to be included in the development of solutions. Lived experience is key to understanding and addressing addiction, which Shuler identifies as a public health problem, and an economic and social problem encompassing race, poverty, and power. VERDICT The commitment, tenacity, and empathy of the users, activists, and advocates Shuler meets is a stark corrective to the disdain and dehumanization typical of policy and practice in this area. The title forcefully claims this story for Ohio, a statistical center, but addiction reaches all places, and this book is strongly recommended for readers anywhere who are interested in systemic change and the power of the grassroots. [See Prepub Alert, 3/4/20.]—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Library Journal

2020-06-30
Another alarming report from the front lines of the opioid epidemic.

Shuler, who teaches journalism at Denison University, focuses his on-the-ground study in nearby Newark, Ohio, “a microcosm of the U.S. economy—a once-prosperous industrial city that has felt the effects of neoliberal free-trade policies.” Though not far from Columbus, Newark is also perched on the edge of Appalachia; it suffers from all the troubles of a Rust Belt city, including a populace that is largely unprepared for this long-term economic shift and has not been quick to reeducate itself. Thus begins a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy—as Shuler points out, the toll that opioids take on the under- or uneducated means more than four times the death rate as compared to those with even some college. This speaks to the current notion, propounded by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, of “deaths of despair.” As Shuler further notes, although the opioid crisis is indisputably a matter of public health and “a form of collective trauma on par with the HIV/AIDS crisis,” it is generally treated as a criminal matter, which only exacerbates the problem. Some of Shuler’s informants have had it a little better in life but still fall victim: a woman of a comparatively privileged background who turned to drugs to self-medicate for bipolar disorder and who deems the current overdose crisis—“since 2000, the accidental overdose rate in Ohio has more than tripled”—a human rights crisis as well. The author ventures some eminently practical measures, including making lifesaving medications widely available; more users, he urges, “could be saved from an opioid overdose death if more people had naloxone.” Furthermore, we blame drugs too readily when “they’re just a symptom” of a greater social crisis we continually fail to address. Though not quite on par, this book should be shelved next to Beth Macy’s Dopesick and Sam Quinones’ Dreamland.

Full of grim yet important statistics and vignettes as well as a few sensible solutions.

Kirkus Reviews