# Dopesick **Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America** is Beth Macy's 2018 book on the US opioid crisis as seen from its Appalachian epicenter — primarily Virginia's coalfields and the surrounding Kentucky / West Virginia border region. The book is built on roughly two decades of Macy's reporting for the *Roanoke Times* on the rural Virginia communities that were the first US identified epicenter of the [[OxyContin]] epidemic from 2000 onward. Unlike Patrick Radden Keefe's [[Empire of Pain]] (2021), which centers on the Sackler family itself, *Dopesick* centers on the patients, families, treatment workers, law-enforcement officers, and (in some sustained reporting) the pill-mill physicians, dealers, and addicted users — the human-scale shape of the crisis on the ground. The 2021 Hulu limited series *Dopesick* (created by Danny Strong, starring Michael Keaton) is adapted from the book and significantly raised the public profile of both the book and the broader opioid-crisis discourse. ## See Also - [[Purdue Pharma]] — the corporate driver - [[OxyContin]] — the drug - [[Opioid Crisis Timeline]] — the chronological story - [[Empire of Pain]] — companion volume on the Sackler family itself - [[Sackler Family]] — the dynasty