Shawn Schmid

Clan of the Cave Bear was great. Unfortunately, the author went on from this action-packed, well-researched action novel to write a series of romance novels, that to me are unreadable. (I read the 2nd novel of the series, realizing all the way that I’d been tricked into the Romance genre, hoping it would revert; it didn’t.) I passed on the rest of the series with extreme prejudice (romance: yearning, yearning, never getting. “Oh how could he love me, I’m so hideous!” for. 300. Pages.) I’d read “Clan…” again since it’s been 40 years. Strong female hero escapes the prehistoric patriarchy..great stuff!

Timely & informative, you should read this book the next time you, or a family member ODs and dies from fentanyl, like my sister did in 2021. My brother was a great reader! I wish he could have read it before he died in the ICU from complications brought about through his 40+ years of drug abuse, which included between 10-15 years in prison + five years homeless. See, he played a huge part in America’s War on People Who Use Drugs! Not that treatment was never available for my brother/or sister. Between the two, they’d been in treatment a dozen times or more. I know my sister had some specialized treatment for medics before she lost her RN License. But that was ten years before she was found dead in a hotel room floor of fentanyl OD. While books talk about the ease of ordering precursor chemicals online from China 🇨🇳, and America spends $58 billion on another War on People Who Use Drugs, as long as there remains this HIGH a DEMAND for drugs especially in America 🇺🇸, but worldwide since caveman days until 2024 so far, we got 99 problems, and El Chapo ain’t one 1️⃣ What are your children doing with their friends down in the basement right now? Homework? Yep, I always did my homework, too.

If I never listened to this album, I may never have experimented with hallucinogenic drugs + weed, coke, heroin, sniff glue, etc Or maybe drugs came first, music second :-) Really though, U.H. had two lead guitarists--they needed them in order to kick all the ass which could be kicked. Came out when I was 15, would recommend to a friend.

Published August 2018, Dopesick is a tragedy with no stunning climax that brings the story to an end. The story is never-ending, as of 2019. Think of the addicts in your family, and in the family of each of your friends. Which ones have died? Which have gone to prison for some years? Which ones would you never allow inside your house because they cannot be trusted; after going through your medicine cabinets they may steal your wife's wedding rings to swap for 10 vicodin pills, or a few caps of heroin (sometimes the mixture for sale, whether it contain Mexican tar mixed with powdered filler to make a brown powder, or China white, which could be a mix containing Fentanyl are placed into transparent capsules for sale for $10). So dangerous today, if you shot two caps yesterday, and you get hold of a new gang's dope today which has been cut with Fentanyl and you try one cap to test its strength, you could be lying unconscious on the floor either dead, or merely unconscious where you wake up and go and get more before they run out because it is so powerful that one cap can see you through the day, where yesterday you had to steal up to $100 just to not get sick. But this book is mostly about the fact that the Sackler Family has given its members billion-dollar pay-outs since they are a privately held company, and allowed to issue bonuses if they want to, due to the billions of dollars they have made selling opiates. Most addicts alive in 2019 started using opiates after an injury or a trip to a doctor or a hospital where they needed some pain killers for a broken arm, as could happen to any innocent boy or girl. Then the pills run out. But the drug use never ends. The book does not ignore the fact that there are thousands of people with chronic disease or illness in America, and people who are getting Chemo for Cancer, who all need powerful pain-killers like opiates. We should not take that away from them. But the four people a day in North Carolina who die from opiate overdose are not those people. Those people who need it, use it as prescribed and if they get a prescription for 30 pills, it lasts all month. That is not who we are concerned with in this book. We are concerned with the 15 people in the state of West Virginia who die from opiate overdose every single day. Opiate overdose is the leading cause of death for young people today, above traffic accident (which has always been the leading killer of 25 year old boys in America since the Model T; no more). This illness used to be caused the Soldier's Sickness after the Civil War. Heroin was used to treat soldiers' addiction to morphine. The book traces use of opium back to 3400 bce Mesopotamia, and mentions the two Opium Wars between the British and China (and British and French vs. China in Opium War II) That is also how the British scored Hong Kong until 2009. This is just OUR generations' Opium War. Everyone should read about it before someone you loves dies from it. Humbly submitted this 29th day of May, 2019