A bioethicist’s eloquent and riveting memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal-a harrowing personal reckoning and clarion call for change not only for federal government but medicine itself, revealing having less crucial assets and structures to take care of this insidious nationwide epidemic.

Travis Rieder’s terrifying trip down the rabbit opening of opioid dependence began with a motorcycle accident in 2015. Long lasting six surgeries, the drugs he received were both miraculous and essential to about In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids his recovery. But his most profound suffering emerged several months afterwards when he proceeded to go into acute opioid withdrawal while following his physician’s purchases. Over the course of four excruciating weeks, Rieder discovered what this means to be “dope unwell”-the physical and mental agony caused by opioid dependence. Clueless how to manage his opioid taper, Travis’s doctors suggested he return back on the drugs and try again later. Yet returning to pills out of concern with withdrawal is one route to full-blown craving. Instead, Rieder continuing the painful process of weaning himself.

Rieder’s encounter exposes a dark secret of American discomfort management: a healthcare system so conflicted about opioids, and so inept in managing them, how the turmoil currently facing us is both unsurprising and inevitable. As he recounts his tale, Rieder provides a fascinating look at the history of the drugs first developed in the 1800s, changing attitudes about discomfort management over the following decades, as well as the implementation from the discomfort scale at the beginning from the twenty-first hundred years. He explores both science of cravings and the systemic and cultural barriers we must conquer if we are to address the problem efficiently in the modern American healthcare system.

In Pain isn’t just a gripping personal account of dependence, but a groundbreaking exploration of the intractable factors behind America’s opioid problem and their implications for resolving the crisis. Rieder makes clear that the opioid crisis is available against a backdrop of actual, debilitating pain-and that anyone can fall victim to this epidemic.