The book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, is a narrative nonfiction book that tells about the development of the opiate epidemic in America. Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic has to be thought about in two different parts. The first part being the stories that are told. The second part is more focused on the laws and policies that were put in effect, which caused the opiate epidemic to thrive in America. The main focus of the book is to inform readers of how the epidemic started, how it developed over time, and how it is still a very big problem in America today. The book is written by Sam Quinones who is known for writing nonfiction. Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic is not set up like you average chapter book. Quinones sets the book up in a way that gives you three to four page snippets of information about different stories, that had a lot to do with shaping the opiate epidemic. These snippets end at crucial moments that leave you begging for more. It keeps you wanting to pick back up in the same story you left off. Thankfully, Quinones doesn’t leave us in the dark and actually does carry on with most of the stories, to show how their outcomes had major effects on the opiate epidemic in America. Some of these stories include towns that were ravaged by opiates, families that were torn apart by opiates, an insight on how heroin was being smuggled and sold in America, and how different types of opiates were created, and developed and the effects they would have on people. In small towns of America, not much happens. Parents work all day, kids are at school, and nothing out of the ordinary ever really happens.
There isn’t a whole lot of money flowing through the area, and it is real easy to blend in. In our book, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, the foundation of our story begins in one of the small towns of America. Portsmouth, Ohio is where we are first introduced to the American community. Life just casually happens in Portsmouth. It is quite literally the definition of small town America. Specifically in Portsmouth we are brought to a town called Scioto County. Quinones tells us all about the little town. All the shops, the hottest places to eat, but the entire towns favorite spot for summer time was a small, private swimming pool called Dreamland. No one in the town had enough money to have a their own pool, but with Dreamland at their expense they were the richest people in America. The pool was the town’s everything. It held the memories of almost everyone in Portsmouth. Even after the opiate epidemic had basically destroyed the town, the memories of the people who grew up there were alive and well. As Quinones puts it, “Two Portsmouths exist today. One is a town of abandoned buildings at the edge of the Ohio River. The other resides in the memories of thousands in the town’s diaspora who grew up during its better years and return to the actual Portsmouth rarely, if at all. When you ask them what the town was back then, it was Dreamland. (Quinones, 4)” Probably some of the saddest parts in the book, come at the stories of families being torn apart by opiates. To hear real life accounts from people about how opiates destroyed their family is one of the hardest things to do. Continuing to read is hard, but you know without continuing you will not have the information you need to learn from the mistakes of these families. One of these families are the Schoonover’s.
The father of the family is Paul Schoonover. Paul is a co-owner of an insurance agency. His wife Ellen is a stay-at-home mom. Paul and Ellen have two boys; Myles and Matt. Quinones tells us that as Myles is growing up, he had friends who drank and smoked marijuana, but he did not know anyone that had done heroin. The Schoonover’s were an upper-middle class family, as the boys went to a private Christian high school. Quinones says that Myles was a great student, but Matt on the other hand had trouble focusing because he had attention deficit disorder. Eventually, this led to Matt abusing prescription pills. As Myles went off to study at Yale, Matt moved back with his parents and his addiction got worse. He turned to Percocet which, after being created by Purdue Pharma in Connecticut, turned in to OxyContin. From OxyContin, Matt became addicted to heroin. Quinones tells us that Matt joined a rehab center for his addiction. After rehab, his family thought that all was well, and they were out of the storm. But on May 11, 2012 a police man showed up at the Schoonover’s door announcing that Matt had died from an overdose on black tar heroin. According to Quinones, the Schoonovers weren’t the only ones. “But across America, thousands of people like Matt Schoonover were dying. Drug overdoses were killing more people every year than car accidents. Auto fatalities had been the leading cause of accidental death for decades until this. (Quinones, 7)” Matt Schoonover was not the only person to die from black tar heroin.
Many people died every day from the life-ruining drug. The story of another life being ruined comes from the chapter in the book called Just a Phone Call Away. I want to talk about this chapter because it gives us a great idea as to why black tar heroin gained so much popularity over many other drugs. It does a great job explaining the actions that were taken by the dealer to ensure that their product would sell. The chapter starts off by introducing us to a man named Alan Levine, a mid forties man who lost his legs. It tells us that because Alan lost his legs, his multiple times a day trip to get dope was very difficult and often ended in him being mugged or robbed. All of this changed though when he came across a business card of dealers who would deliver dope to you. The first time he called they were there with his heroin in fifteen minutes. The trek that he used to take to get his fix now became “just a phone call away from getting loaded. (Quinones, 70)” Alan is a prime example of why the black tar heroin business took off. The customers who needed the drug could get it quick and relatively cheap. The customer’s felt like they were actually cared for as if they were customers at a nice retail store.
Probably the main reason the dealers did so well is because they were so good at keeping the druggy at coming back for more. One example is when Alan thought one of the delivery guys was cheating him out of the amount they agreed on. He was taken to the man who ran the show, El Gato. El Gato apologized for the inconvenience, gave him the heroin for free and kept a happy customer. This is the same thing I have to do at my place of work. You get an unhappy customer, you give them some sort of compensation, and they leave happy and you keep their business. For the opiate epidemic, and specifically heroin, to hit its stride and take off there first needed to be a way to smuggle the heroin in and a solid way to sell it. As we are told by Quinones, the black tar heroin was fairly easy to come by. Poppy flowers were grown in the mountains above Xalisco, Mexico. The flowers were harvested and given to cookers who would cook the flowers down into a goo which contained the opium. The sticky goo was then transported across the border, often in a boombox or a small backpack. To make profit from the heroin, it had to be sold. Quinones tells us the story of a young boy named Enrique who lived on a rancho in Nayarit, Mexico. His family wasn’t very well off, and Enrique didn’t like the situation he was in. So he took it upon himself to travel to the United States, specifically Canoga Park in San Fernando Valley, CA. Enriques uncles lived in Canoga Park, and had made money for themselves there.
This is where Enriques longed to go because he wanted to join his uncles in whatever money making business they were involved in. When he got there, they were stunned to see him, and after some brief arguments they told him how they made their money. After learning, Enrique was intrigued and wanted to be apart of it. Again, after some thinking, his uncles agreed to let him work for them. Enrique became a delivery man for his uncles. He would drive around with balloon filled heroin in his mouth. This was so if he was pulled over, he could swallow the balloons and he wouldn’t be arrested. After a few months of delivering, his uncles gave him two beater cars, an apartment and let him run a small ‘branch’ of their business. He took calls all day, rolled heroin balloons, and directed other delivery men to the addicts locations. He sold to all kinds of people, and life seemed good. Until one day, his uncles received a call saying there was a feud in the family that led to a mass shooting. Enriques uncles packed gave him a suitcase and two thousand dollars for his work, and sent him back home. After months of what had seemed like paradise, Enrique was back to sad life of being the son of a drunk sugarcane farmer.
