After a bad fall, Tom, in constant pain and addicted to painkillers at the cost of his relationships with his wife and son, realizes he can never work again and ends up in subsidized housing, where he hatches a scheme to commit convenience-check fraud with neighbors he considers lowlifes.

"The opioid epidemic is responsible for the first sustained decline in U.S. life expectancy since the 1960s. In 2016, more than 50,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose -- to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands who live with some measure of opioid addiction every day. The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know is an accessible, nonpartisan overview of the causes, politics, and treatments tied to the most devastating health crisis...

"This engaging and informative title delves into the history of the opioid crisis, details the science behind opioid addiction, and advises young people on how they can help those in their communities struggling with addiction"--

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.

In the vein of Mary Karrs Lit, Augusten Burroughs Dry and Sarah Hepolas Blackout, As Needed for Pain is a raw and rivetingand often wryly funnyaddiction memoir from one of New York medias most accomplished editors which explores his never-before-told story of opioid addiction and the drastic impact it had on his life and career--Jacket.

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...

"When Annie Brown, a fun-loving woman, suddenly dies, her husband, best friend, and her children all struggle to find ways to go on after the loss of the woman who was the center of their lives, and who made life happy, fun, and secure. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help, and to an old girlfriend for solace. Annie's best friend struggles again with opioid addiction, having depended on...

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

While visiting Angela, one her protégés in Kansas, V.I. Warshawski, when Angela's roommate goes missing and V.I. finds her near death in a drug house, is pitched headlong into the country's opioid crisis and a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War.