In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids

Travis Rieder, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University, offers chilling testimony that anyone can fall victim to opioid dependence and abuse. In May 2015, Rieder suffered a harrowing motorcycle accident, almost losing his foot after he collided with a van. The devastating event led to a dozen complicated reconstructive surgeries. Along the way, Rieder was prescribed medications that helped alleviate the intense pain during each phase of his recovery. However, his dependence on opioids escalated, and he was faced with the grim reality that he was addicted to prescription painkillers and would need to learn how to live without them.

In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids presents intimate details of Rieder's experiences, struggles and frightful setbacks while seamlessly weaving in myriad issues of the larger addiction cycle. This includes the nature of pain, instincts to avoid it and classes of painkillers; the history of pain control; and how painkillers evolved into a lucrative pharmaceutical business. He further expounds on aspects of dependence and addiction, and the ethical responsibility of health-care providers who prescribe, and many times overprescribe, painkillers.

Opioids have pervaded American culture, creating a public health crisis. Rieder, however, offers hope to combat the epidemic by sharing examples of some of the great work being done by dedicated scientists and physicians. The urgent, riveting nature of Rieder's well-informed narrative convincingly advocates for a shift in values and the pursuit of alternative means of pain control as essential parts of necessary reform. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

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