Episode 757 - Sam Quinones
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:My podcast.
Marc:Tomorrow is election day.
Marc:It's election day tomorrow.
Marc:I just did Carnegie Hall.
Marc:I'm looking to the future for the country, and I'm looking to a tremendous career and personal achievement.
Marc:Just two days ago, my cat LaFonda was in trouble.
Marc:There's a jumble of things.
Marc:that I need to share with you.
Marc:But let's start with this.
Marc:Tomorrow's Election Day.
Marc:Go do your civic duty.
Marc:Go be part of democracy.
Marc:Go and vote.
Marc:You know the right vote to make for yourself.
Marc:I personally, I prefer the person who's had a lifetime of experience working towards being able to do and do well the upper management position of President of the United States.
Marc:I think that you should vote for that person, not the impulsive, mentally ill, self-centered liar.
Marc:Because if you are still thinking that that person is the right person to lead our country, I think you're probably fundamentally un-American and don't really have a sense of how democracy works or what democracy is or what personal freedom is and what the country should really look like and how it should progress.
Marc:But that's just my feelings.
Marc:I don't like to be biased, but I stand by my belief that if you vote for that guy, you're a sucker and a moron.
Marc:There's no other way to look at it.
Marc:And I know you've all made your decisions and maybe you're thinking I'm I'm being too abusive or I'm not being tolerant of other views.
Marc:I'm fine.
Marc:You're fine.
Marc:We're all people.
Marc:Most of us are decent people.
Marc:Just try to pull your head out of your ass if you're thinking of voting for that idiot.
Marc:It's embarrassing.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And before I forget, there's no third party in America.
Marc:That's not how the system is structured.
Marc:There isn't a third party.
Marc:There may be.
Marc:There could be.
Marc:But why don't you work on that on the downtime in between presidential elections?
Marc:You can use that time to start getting behind candidates on local and state levels if you want to try to have a third party foothold.
Marc:Don't just all of a sudden decide.
Marc:Every four years that you're going to vote for any idiot who represents something different because you don't like the other two.
Marc:There's no third party.
Marc:Pick a team.
Marc:All right?
Marc:The Cubs and the Indians.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They were in the World Series on that last game.
Marc:No one was rooting for the Yankees.
Marc:You dig.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Again, I don't love my tone when I'm in this place, but it's tomorrow.
Marc:Now, let's move on to other things.
Marc:So and do the other voting to vote for the numbers and the other people on the ballot.
Marc:The vestiges of democracy exists.
Marc:They're always there to be brought back to life.
Marc:There is always hope.
Marc:I am not cynical, but do not.
Marc:if you can help yourself, vote a fucking lunatic into the White House.
Marc:A fucking lunatic.
Marc:I don't care what you think about criminal this, criminal that.
Marc:Vote for the person that can do the job.
Marc:It's a big job to be global mental management.
Marc:You got to be able to function as a person to do the job to maintain a functioning country, not a dysfunctional person who is a lying sack of shit, who is bankrupt morally and psychologically.
Marc:But again, I don't want to get anyone upset.
Marc:We're all people.
Marc:We're good people.
Marc:Americans are all entitled to their opinion and to their vote, and you do it by yourself in that booth.
Marc:You do it by yourself in that booth for a couple of reasons, right?
Marc:So you don't have to tell anybody because a lot of you are going to do the wrong thing, and you might hang around people who are more reasonable and level-headed, right?
Marc:So you're hedging your bets by not talking and going in there, quietly voting for the wrong person.
Marc:So just maybe if we all end up standing behind the same fence, wearing the same outfit, when someone goes, who the fuck voted for this guy?
Marc:You want to be able to go, I don't know, right?
Marc:It's fucking crazy.
Marc:Where in your heart, you thought you'd be wearing the other uniform.
Marc:A little extreme, but God bless America.
Marc:So, onward.
Marc:Vote.
Marc:Next.
Marc:Next up.
Marc:Well, I did it.
Marc:Can I talk about my personal achievements?
Marc:It was pretty amazing, pretty overwhelming.
Marc:I performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Marc:On Friday, November 4th, 2016, I had my friend Nate Bargetzi open for me.
Marc:I did a two-hour show.
Marc:It was a little longer than they expected.
Marc:Not the crowd, but the venue and the festival.
Marc:Kind of rushed the after party a bit with all of my old Jewish relatives.
Marc:different representatives of mine.
Marc:But that's not the point.
Marc:The point is that I'll tell you exactly how it went.
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:It wasn't so much that I was nervous.
Marc:I mean, I'm at a point where I'm not afraid to do stand-up.
Marc:But...
Marc:But there was something about Carnegie Hall and something about New York City and something about the opportunity and something about the reality of it that was hitting all the triggers.
Marc:Just sort of like, nah, I'm not worthy.
Marc:I don't know if I can do it.
Marc:What if I buckle?
Marc:My vessel was shaking.
Marc:My vessel was shaking.
Marc:Do you understand that the ship was was was I was I was going through turbulence heading into New York.
Marc:I didn't bring anyone with me.
Marc:I told Sarah she couldn't come because I just I needed I didn't want to worry about anything but doing that show.
Marc:And I got to New York.
Marc:I didn't do anything differently than I usually do.
Marc:I checked into the hotel.
Marc:I went to Veselka.
Marc:I had some borscht.
Marc:I went over my notes.
Marc:I was keeping it loose like I usually do.
Marc:I knew I had some big set pieces.
Marc:I knew there was a lot of things I wanted to say.
Marc:I knew I could stand up there for two to three hours.
Marc:I just wanted it to be good, but I wasn't sure as of Thursday night exactly what I was going to be opening with.
Marc:I was even writing new jokes and putting callbacks together, adding things in my mind on my notes Thursday night.
Marc:Friday morning, I'm up.
Marc:You know, I'm trying not to freak out.
Marc:My mom's going to be there.
Marc:I'm just trying to take it easy doing the New York thing.
Marc:The weather is beautiful.
Marc:It's just gorgeous out.
Marc:Perfect fall day.
Marc:I'm only allowing a couple of people to come backstage if they want to come backstage.
Marc:I just want it to be me and another comic, Nate.
Marc:backstage i don't want any management i don't want any family i don't want nobody but i wanted sharpling there i needed tom sharpling in the room because he grounds me makes me laugh uh you know we're kindred spirits i just like having him around so i asked him to please come backstage so it was just me nate bargetsy tom sharpling backstage at carnegie hall when we go out there to to do that sound check
Marc:And I got to tell you, man, that stage is gorgeous.
Marc:That room is gorgeous.
Marc:Obviously.
Marc:Obviously.
Marc:You know, we're just sitting back there.
Marc:Nate decides to pull up a list of everyone who's performed there, which doesn't always help.
Marc:Doesn't always help to see the legends that you're going to have to fill the same space as they did.
Marc:But, you know, Nate and I walk out there and it's a theater and I've done theaters before and it's beautifully structured.
Marc:There's a nice rounded element to it.
Marc:There's many tears to the balcony, but somehow it still feels intimate.
Marc:And I had that moment where I stopped freaking out and I stood there and I'm like, oh, I can do this.
Marc:I live up here.
Marc:I live on these stages.
Marc:This is it's just a theater on some level.
Marc:My friend Don, even trying to make me feel better, he told me, like, if there's any way I can level your expectation, you know, my mom was in a barbershop quartet that won, came in second place in a contest, and she performed there.
Marc:And he said, they're just happy you're going to sell the place out.
Marc:And then I started to think about it.
Marc:I mean, how many of those classical events really do sell out?
Marc:How much action does Carnegie Hall...
Marc:you know, really see.
Marc:But why would I be doing that?
Marc:What do I got to diminish in order to feel better?
Marc:Why can't I just, why couldn't I be an alchemist that transforms dread and anxiety into excitement and joy?
Marc:That was really the experiment at hand.
Marc:But checking the sound, you felt the weight of the place.
Marc:It was empty, but it felt like a special place.
Marc:But I felt like I got this.
Marc:I can do this.
Marc:I've been doing this more than half of my fucking life.
Marc:So Nate goes out there, kills it, does a beautiful 15 minutes, and he brings me on, folks.
Marc:He brings me on, and the acoustics in that place, the sound of it, the history of it, all of it, everything that got me there, and everything that that place represents, and everything that everyone in that room represents, all 2,600 of them that came to see me.
Marc:They're applauding.
Marc:And I get out there and I'm just shattered, just shattered, like just overwhelmed with emotion.
Marc:And I just felt it in my whole body, just this rupture beginning to happen.
Marc:And I had to get hold of myself.
Marc:I was like, there's no crying.
Marc:We don't open the Carnegie Hall show with crying.
Marc:I said to me from the inside, that is not how this is going to go.
Marc:I mean, I don't mind crying.
Marc:God knows I've been talking about it for a while.
Marc:having it happen.
Marc:But even if they understood, I don't want to start in that place.
Marc:I got to pull it together.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:And I felt that happening.
Marc:I was on stage.
Marc:And then I took my stool.
Marc:I sat in my stool.
Marc:I took my seat.
Marc:And I started to talk.
Marc:But I was very emotional.
Marc:And I wasn't really connecting.
Marc:And I was trying to feel the room, trying to feel how do I connect with this room.
Marc:And I felt the emotions.
Marc:And I felt the insecurity.
Marc:And I felt the weight of not really preparing how I was going to open clearly.
Marc:It was all there.
Marc:But you know what all those things did?
Marc:All those things that the emotions, the insecurity, the the not knowing it fucking it just grounded me right there in the goddamn present on that stage sitting on a stool in Carnegie Hall in that big, vast, empty stage.
Marc:That is Carnegie Hall.
Marc:Nothing else but me in a stool and a mic stand and.
Marc:I don't know what happened, but I broke it open.
Marc:I felt the love of my fans.
Marc:I felt the room.
Marc:And then I just locked in and I kind of had these a couple of out of body experiences where I'm like, you're in it, dude.
Marc:You're just look at you on stage at Carnegie Hall.
Marc:I think I even stopped and said, you know, I'm going to feel great about this.
Marc:My mother was in the room, a lot of other relatives, old friends.
Marc:And I just stayed up there and I improvised and I did the jokes I wanted to do.
Marc:And I stayed in the saddle of it and in the present and felt it all.
Marc:I did some big, big riffing.
Marc:I wanted to read an email from my father that had come that day.
Marc:And I'd given my phone to one of the women who works for the festival and she was out there.
Marc:outside somewhere, not on stage, obviously.
Marc:So I started calling her for her to come on stage and bring me the phone, and she wasn't showing up.
Marc:So there was this amazing theatrical improv that was literally theater.
Marc:There was 2,600 people wondering whether or not someone was going to walk through a door, the expectations.
Marc:And then I didn't think it was going to happen.
Marc:And then she showed up and opened the door.
Marc:Everybody cheered.
Marc:I got the phone.
Marc:I read the email.
Marc:Got some laughs with that.
Marc:And then I actually found myself for a split second about to check my texts on stage at Carnegie Hall.
Marc:I was about to check my texts.
Marc:So that has to indicate that I was pretty fucking comfortable.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I think I brought that room right into me and put it back out.
Marc:I think I made Carnegie Hall...
Marc:the giant that it is, into a small, beautiful little cradle of people that were just, I was hanging around, talking, getting some laughs.
Marc:I made Carnegie Hall work on my terms, and it was one of the most exciting events in my life.
Marc:And I'm very happy that some of you were there to witness it.
Marc:I feel great about it, and now things are going to change.
Marc:Things are going to change.
Marc:Not in a bad way, but they're going to change.
Marc:But thank you for all your support.
Marc:And thank you for believing in me.
Marc:And thank you for being there if you were there.
Marc:And I'm proud of myself.
Marc:And I think my mommy is proud too.
Marc:What are those changes?
Marc:Is that what you're going to ask?
Marc:I'm going to fucking take it easy, folks.
Marc:I've been chasing my ass for fucking years.
Marc:I've been chasing this comedy dream.
Marc:I do this podcast.
Marc:I'm happy to do the podcast.
Marc:It's really what I was meant to do.
Marc:I'm good at whatever the hell happens in here.
Marc:I'm good at stand-up.
Marc:I'm a great stand-up.
Marc:I've never been a better stand-up.
Marc:And I just proved that.
Marc:to myself, finally.
Marc:And to be honest with you, I don't know what anyone thinks of me in the big picture, but I know where I stand now.
Marc:And from here on out, because I can, I'm going to take my time building my act.
Marc:I'm going to take my time really thinking about putting together shows at my own pace.
Marc:There's no fucking hurry.
Marc:I'm going to do a bunch of dates in the spring.
Marc:I'm probably going to tape a special.
Marc:But after that,
Marc:I'm going to take it easy a little bit.
Marc:Obviously, the podcast's not going anywhere, but I'm going to take it easy, and I'm going to do something.
Marc:I'm going to take some months and figure out something amazing to do.
Marc:See, I'm drawn to these big lines, being dramatic.
Marc:I'll probably just end up doing what I always do, compulsively going to comedy clubs three nights a week to do 15 minutes so I feel like a human with an outlet, with a craft and a skill.
Marc:LaFonda, I brought back to the vet since I last talked to you in a panic.
Marc:She's up and around.
Marc:She's kind of running around a little bit.
Marc:She's eating more.
Marc:She's about 80% of what she used to be, but she's 12 years old, and if she can just stay there and not decline, I'd be happy.
Marc:She didn't die while I was doing Carnegie Hall, which I thought was...
Marc:gonna happen and she's doing okay I don't know if she will stop doing okay once the steroid wears off but she's alive she's up she's kind of mostly herself and I'm grateful for that so
Marc:So I am thrilled to have Sam Quinones here on the show.
Marc:I had this book sitting around for a couple months.
Marc:It's called Dreamland, The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.
Marc:And I just saw it sitting there.
Marc:It gets sent a lot of books.
Marc:There was something about it, though.
Marc:I'm like, I would like to know.
Marc:I would like to know.
Marc:I want to know.
Marc:I want to know about that.
Marc:I want to know about this plague.
Marc:How did it happen?
Marc:How did it happen on a societal level, on a business level, on an economic level?
Marc:It seemed like one of those books.
Marc:And it was one of those books.
Marc:It was a book that should be read now heading into this election.
Marc:It should be read for a lot of reasons because it really shows you through the lens of opiates, through the lens of black tar heroin and that business and the lens of opioids, oxycontin, oxycodone and that business and
Marc:You see what economic difficulties and different parts of the country and shifting trends in manufacturing and job availabilities.
Marc:You see the immigrant experience in a couple of ways.
Marc:You hear the voices of law enforcement, of drug addicts, of people who are dealing with that.
Marc:But ultimately, it's really a portrait of America.
Marc:in the last couple of decades in a very specific way, but it's all encompassing.
Marc:And Sam, Sam Quinones, he spent a lot of time in Mexico.
Marc:He's got several books available that you can get them as well.
Marc:Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream and True Tales from Another Mexico or a couple of his books.
Marc:He lived in Mexico for over a decade.
Marc:He was on the Immigration Beat for the LA Times.
Marc:For a long time, this black tar heroin thing was sort of a fluke.
Marc:But he's a man who understands the immigrant experience.
Marc:And a lot of what happens in this book, Dreamland, is really an amazing story about Mexico in a lot of ways, as much as it is about the United States.
Marc:And it is a page turner.
Marc:And he's the real deal.
Marc:He just lives down the street from me somewhere.
Marc:not far away, and I reached out to him.
Marc:Someone sent me, said they knew him, sent me an email and connected us, and he was thrilled to come over.
Marc:But see, what you'll hear here
Marc:not unlike my talk with David Simon, is a real journalist and a guy who pursued the story from nothing.
Marc:The story did not exist, and it was out there to be told, and it's an important one.
Marc:So listen to a very engaged, very intelligent, and very thorough and on-the-level journalist talk about how America...
Marc:got destroyed in a lot of ways by opiates.
Marc:This is me and Sam Quinones talking about Dreamland, the true tale of America's opiate epidemic.
Guest:You know, I had this book.
Marc:You had your book sitting around in a stack of shit that comes to me because I get shit sent to me.
Marc:I get a lot of shit sent to me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And for some reason, I was like, you know, just the subheading, you know, like dreamland, the true tale of America's opiate epidemic.
Marc:Like I've seen books about things before, but I just I didn't let this go.
Marc:Like it was just sitting there for months.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, great.
Marc:With other stuff, and I'm pushing aside other stuff.
Marc:I'm bringing books to libraries because I don't want to throw stuff away.
Marc:But I kept that there, and then I decided one day I'll just pick it up.
Marc:I've been waiting on it, kind of.
Marc:And I couldn't fucking stop, you know?
Marc:And I hadn't had that.
Marc:Great, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I hadn't had that happen, though, with a piece of journalism since Fast Food Nation, since Schlosser's book.
Marc:And it's sort of similar in the way it breaks shit down and it's readable and it gets into all the nooks and crannies and all the different layers of what you're dealing with.
Marc:It's not about hamburgers, but it's about heroin that was sold like hamburgers in a way.
Guest:It was about franchising.
Marc:Pills that are sold the same way, kind of, too.
Marc:right what was compelling to me was it's really about america yes like it's about you know part part one of the elements of the decline of america but it's something that really is sourced in in uh you know a failing economy you know outsourcing uh an over ambitious corporate environment uh a pharmacological environment and new mexico plays into this too a little bit and i grew up the thing about the
Guest:The story I realized is that when I got into the book, I thought I was writing a crime book.
Guest:I thought I was writing a dope book.
Guest:I had lived in Mexico for many years.
Guest:For what?
Guest:I was a reporter down there.
Guest:I was a journalist freelancer, just kind of winging it.
Guest:And I wrote two books down there.
Guest:Why Mexico?
Guest:Why Mexico?
Guest:I just went down there because I believe that Mexico was becoming enormously important first at that time to California and then of course later to all of the United States.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I went down there and I went down for three months to study Spanish a little bit because my Spanish was really bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I ended up finding a job at a little funky magazine and staying for 10 years.
Guest:And I wrote two books about Mexico and did a lot of travel.
Guest:So my focus was not about the United States.
Guest:I didn't even really know when I started this what an OxyContin was or a Vicodin was.
Guest:When did you start?
Guest:How many years ago?
Guest:This was 2009.
Guest:And so I came back to the United States in 2004 to work for the LA Times.
Guest:As a staff writer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And meanwhile, the whole drug war in Mexico kicks off.
Guest:Gets very, very medieval.
Guest:The cartels.
Guest:Yeah, and it's not just the cartels.
Guest:It's the cartels feuding where they used to not.
Guest:They used to kind of have the gentleman's agreement.
Guest:And then, of course, you get the government fighting them all and the cartels fighting each other.
Guest:And it gets very, very sinister very quickly.
Guest:And so in 2008, I was put on a team of reporters to write about the drug war.
Guest:I was in L.A.
Guest:I spoke fluent Spanish in New Mexico.
Guest:So my job was to cover how drugs were trafficked once they crossed the border.
Guest:It's a very good idea.
Guest:Nobody writes about that kind of stuff.
Guest:And I had written a couple stories and I was...
Guest:casting around for another one and i find a series of stories out of the town of huntington west virginia where a dozen people had died of black tar heroin in six months now before that as just kind of background i had worked as a crime reporter a big part of my career was as a crime reporter in the city of stockton california which if you know stock is a really good place to be a crime reporter
Marc:That's not a great thing for Stockton.
Guest:No, but I love the town.
Guest:I want to say this.
Guest:I don't let people talk bad about Stockton.
Guest:It's one of my favorite towns.
Guest:But what ended up happening was I learned there a lot about heroin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And in Western United States, I learned we didn't have the white powder heroin that you saw in the French Connection and all that stuff.
Guest:We had only black tar, and it all came from Mexico.
Guest:And it really didn't cross the Mississippi River.
Guest:But that was post, like, what, 95, 96?
Guest:That was in the 80s and the 90s, right?
Guest:Okay, so I come upon this story that kind of breaks down everything I thought I knew about Lactar Heroin.
Guest:One was that it was, I thought it was from Mexico, but I looked and West Virginia had the fewest number of Mexicans in all of the United States, you know?
Marc:What made you read these stories about Virginia?
Marc:I mean, where'd they come from?
Guest:I was just tooling around.
Guest:I actually right now can't remember.
Guest:I just came across this stuff and it got more and Googled more and pretty soon we're heading to West Virginia.
Guest:It's like a dozen people dying in six months.
Guest:They'd only had one overdose in 10 years.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And it seems strange to me.
Guest:Why is there black tar heroin in West Virginia?
Guest:What's it doing east of the Mississippi River?
Guest:Why, if there are no Mexicans in West Virginia, is there Mexican heroin there?
Guest:So I make some phone calls.
Guest:If you're a reporter and you don't follow up on those hunches, you might as well find another job, basically.
Guest:I call Huntington PD.
Guest:Honey PD says, you know, all that dope was coming from Columbus.
Guest:And I call Columbus and DEA.
Guest:And thank God I run into this magnificent DEA agent.
Guest:DEA agents can be, it depends.
Guest:Some are great and some are not so great when it comes to explaining stuff to the media.
Guest:This guy was fantastic.
Guest:Plus he was pissed off.
Guest:He was really mad because he'd been there 10 years.
Guest:And he said, when I got here, I've been in business 25 years.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I got here 10 years ago.
Guest:We had no heroin, none in Columbus, Ohio.
Guest:I was like, okay, what happened?
Guest:He says, well, about 10 years ago, we begin to see these Mexican guys tooling around town, their mouths in cars really inconspicuous, not dressed out, not flashy cars, old cars, baseball caps.
Guest:They look like Home Depot day workers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and he goes there are they were their mouths filled with little balloons a tenth of grand doses right a black tar heroin big bottle next to him so they swig it down let the cops stop him next no guns this was the other thing i had grown up my career had started in the crack years and that it was all about guns that's how you got market share you killed your rival sure and also the history in our minds because you're how old are you i'm 57 i'm 52 so like heroin was like new york mafia exactly
Guest:And, you know, you had the example of Al Capone, the Colombians in Miami, the Bloods and the Crooks.
Guest:Drugs, market share is gained through the barrel of a gun.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And these guys, none of that.
Guest:He said, this is the weird thing.
Guest:They don't use any guns.
Guest:And he also said they're on salary.
Guest:And in the drug world, nobody's on salary.
Guest:You're not a salaried employee in the drug world.
Guest:You sell your dope for more than you bought it for.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You step on it.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I'm like, this is bizarre.
Guest:And then he said something that kind of like changed my life.
Guest:Well, first of all, he says, they deliver it like pizza.
Guest:And that was weird.
Guest:So he's like, an addict will call an operator.
Guest:The operator is like standing by.
Guest:And the operator then calls one of these drivers who's around the town, tooling around town with a mouthful of heroin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they meet the guy in a Burger King parking lot or Target parking, some parking lot, something like that.
Marc:So the difference was there's no going to the bad neighborhood.
Marc:There's no like- Convenience.
Guest:It's all about convenience and customer service and bringing the dope to you.
Marc:And that sort of like that plays in, which you'll talk about later, I'm sure, is just the shifting of the clientele.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:yeah that's another point but then he goes he says this he says the crazy thing is man they're all from the same town now I had lived in Mexico and I was I think probably especially ready to hear that because when I lived in Mexico I that that's a very common phenomenon where you have one town where everybody does the same job right everybody's a construction worker biggest example is all the immigrants everyone from one town is a landscaper in Dallas
Guest:for example.
Guest:There's a town I wrote about my first book where everybody makes popsicles and they have these popsicle shops all over Mexico.
Guest:One of the great, great business stories of Mexico, how poor rancheros got to be middle-class business owners through the popsicle.
Guest:And then in front of the town, you go to the town.
Guest:I went to this town several times.
Guest:You go to the town and the front of the town is a two-story concrete popsicle.
Guest:You know?
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:Somebody put a photo of it on my website.
Marc:And also that brings to mind the sort of like the nature of a different sense of competition in Mexican businesses that you made a point later in the book to kind of talk about how there was no shame in selling the exact same thing down the street.
Marc:The only angle you have is to undercut the guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:A couple blocks away.
Guest:And that's a frequent thing if you go to like artisan villages where everyone makes the same kind of ceramics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you see this in like Michoacan streets like that or Oaxaca.
Guest:You see this where people just sell the same stuff.
Guest:And how do you make a living at it?
Guest:Well, you just, yeah, you undercut.
Guest:And eventually it means it's a road to the...
Guest:down, you know, road to the bottom, basically.
Guest:But when he told me that, I was like ready to hear that.
Guest:And the reason that's true is that in Mexico, it's very hard for people at the bottom to get the kind of access to education that will allow them to become
Guest:a mechanical engineer, for example.
Guest:Just really hard to have.
Guest:So you get these villages where everybody does this.
Guest:There's a village near Mexico City where everyone, literally true, everyone is a pimp, and they all pimp girls to Mexico City, and then they figured out Queens, New York, and they began pimping girls to Queens, New York, and building enormous, you go to this house, let's go to this village, and it's now packed with castles, and there's a four-story pagoda, and it's all built by construction workers from a village down the road.
Guest:So what I'm saying is that when he told me that- So wait, they would create almost franchises in Queens with women from Mexico?
Guest:Yeah, basically.
Guest:Families.
Guest:The families were all pimps, like the mom and the sisters and the wives and, of course, the men would pimp out these very naive country girls in Mexico.
Guest:and take them to Queens, New York.
Guest:It's a huge, huge business and made that village very wealthy.
Guest:The name of the town is Tenancingo in the state of Tlaxcala.
Guest:It's very well known as a pimp town.
Guest:So anyway, I was like...
Guest:Ready to hear that there.
Guest:So when I, during that conversation, I realized there must be one town in Mexico where they sell heroin like pizza in Columbus, Ohio.
Guest:And I thought, that's a hell of a story.
Guest:And so I kept on and he said, he comes back on the phone.
Guest:He goes, the name of the town is Tepic Nayarit.
Guest:And right there, I kind of knew that he was wrong because Topeak Nayarit is the capital city of this little small state called Nayarit.
Guest:350,000 people in the city.
Guest:That's not where these kinds of systems grow up.
Guest:They're in small villages.
Guest:And so I kept at it because I knew he wasn't lying to me.
Guest:He just didn't have the right information.
Guest:I knew he was wrong.
Guest:And so what I did was I just wrote to all these guys.
Guest:The other thing he told me was...
Guest:We have arrested these guys and arrested and arrested, and they just keep on sending more people.
Guest:We put these guys in prison, and more guys arrive two days later, a week later.
Guest:And so he gives me a long list of all these guys they've indicted and put in federal prison.
Guest:I write to about, I can't remember, 15, 20 probably of them.
Guest:And, hey, say, would you like to talk about your heroin system?
Guest:That's the way I do my job as a crime reporter.
Guest:You just reach out to people in prison.
Marc:That's a very effective way.
Guest:exactly you want to talk about this and and you get about a 10 response rate and and even though sometimes are no but but um you don't need many to really tell you this the the beautiful full yeah yeah meat of the story which is what happened basically i waited for a month got no nobody you know responding and then one out of the blue i'm in my office little office like you got here kind of um in my garage and
Guest:And this guy calls and he says he's been doing 15 years for being the operator, the phone operator in the pizza delivery system in Columbus.
Guest:Yeah, the dispatch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he says, no, we're not from Tipique.
Guest:We're from a small town called Jalisco.
Guest:Now, that threw me too because Jalisco is actually the name of an enormous state where Guadalajara is located.
Guest:So I'm thinking Jalisco, Nayarit, it sounds to the people who know a little bit like saying Arkansas, Nebraska or something.
Guest:It doesn't make sense.
Guest:And as he's talking, I'm Googling.
Guest:And sure enough, there's a little dinky town called Jalisco right next to Tipeak.
Guest:It's about a few miles away is all.
Guest:And I'm like, holy shit, man.
Guest:It became clear that there was like this one town.
Guest:Because he knew the system.
Guest:He knew how it worked.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, he knew it all.
Guest:He knew it all.
Marc:But you also knew how these small towns worked.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And this, this had to be, this had to be it.
Guest:And he goes, he goes, and then I said, well, but then see the amazing thing was that dude starts talking about all these, he says, no, it's not just Columbus.
Guest:And I'm like sitting there in my chair, seeing this like enormous thing develop as he's talking about
Guest:No, Albuquerque.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, you know, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Reno, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Indianapolis, on and on.
Guest:And I'm like thinking one town.
Guest:I looked it up, 20,000 people in the town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The county is about 45, 49, something like that.
Guest:And I'm like, shit, man, this is...
Guest:Like a massive, a massive thing that this one little town is a purveyor of black tar heroin to, I count eventually, 20 states.
Guest:A town the size of like this neighborhood almost, you know.
Marc:And in your mind, you're like, this is the biggest story.
Guest:This is huge.
Guest:This is huge.
Guest:I'm like, my God, I can't believe it.
Guest:And then, see, I begin to invest.
Guest:So I begin to write to more guys, you know, and begin to call towns.
Guest:So fine.
Guest:And what I find is that for so long- Call it counts in the States?
Guest:In the States, these cities that he has mentioned.
Guest:And the other thing I tell him is, so when did you guys go to New York?
Guest:Because I figure I'm from the 70s.
Guest:I've watched all these heroin movies, Serpico, French Connection, all these great movies.
Guest:I'm thinking, they got to be in New York because that's the heroin market.
Guest:He goes, no, we never go to New York.
Guest:And I'm like, why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because there's, and stupid me, there's gangs there.
Guest:They got guns.
Guest:Mafia entrenched business.
Guest:These guys are looking for the easy way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The town that is like without competition, has no gangs, has no button mafias.
Guest:No heroin.
Guest:And in many places, no heroin almost at all.
Guest:Like Columbus, Ohio, which had virtually no heroin worth a name before these guys show up.
Guest:And so anyway, I begin to write to all these guys, and then I start talking to cops.
Guest:And see, what I found was heroin had been such a low-priority drug for so many years because you had cocaine and crack and meth.
Marc:Heroin was still stigmatized, and it was a very specific clientele.
Guest:And also, for many years, the number of addicts did not grow.
Marc:Right, because it was needles, it was dirty.
Guest:Yeah, everybody, yeah.
Marc:There was a wild New York in the 80s where the heroin grade got higher and you could snort it.
Marc:And that kind of built a new market, I remember.
Marc:But before that, it was really just for real dope fiends.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And so who cares?
Guest:It's not a big deal.
Guest:But there was usually I found one guy, one cop in each town who really, really knew his stuff, you know.
Guest:And first guy was a guy named Dennis Chavez in Denver.
Guest:That guy's a walking encyclopedia, since just retired, actually.
Guest:A walking encyclopedia of information on the Jalisco Boys.
Guest:He was the one who coined the phrase, the Jalisco Boys, which I use in my book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um i found a dude named a guy i have a lot of respect for cops who have really dug in like reporters trying to understand their beat you know yeah yeah ed ruplinger in boise now this guy speaks no spanish yeah he just begins to notice this crew all of a sudden the same way the dea guy in columbus began to notice these crew driving around and all this stuff the same story pretty much actually he speaks no spanish he's all alone in boise nobody really knows of thinks boise and he's trying to make connections and no one's
Guest:And his friends, his colleagues are all laughing at him.
Guest:And he puts together the whole system from like, I don't know exactly how he did it, but he's a tenacious cat.
Guest:And the guy who just kept at it and comes to understand that Boise is actually a minor franchise spot for a family that actually owns like eight houses.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Franchises in Denver, Portland, Reno, I think it was LA, Southern California, Honolulu, etc.
Guest:And he puts it on, traces it all back to this one guy back in Jalisco.
Marc:Tejada?
Marc:Was it Tejada?
Guest:No, it was Garcia Langarica.
Guest:This guy, because of a lot of problems convincing prosecutors that this was an important case in the middle of the meth war, in the middle of the coke thing and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:this guy Poya this is his nickname Garcia Langarica basically is still down there he's not been prosecuted but the amazing thing was I talked to this guy he had retired too he was off the job and I called him and he's like
Guest:What?
Guest:Yeah, that case was like 8, 10 years ago, and he couldn't believe that someone wanted to talk to him about this case.
Guest:The Boise cop.
Guest:The Boise cop, Rupplinger.
Guest:He was fantastic.
Guest:I just, I like drained him, and then I went to Boise, and he showed all these, this reporter from the LA Times, and boy, what are you doing here?
Guest:That just didn't make any sense, but I could see that this was this huge network of guys, and they all designed, you know, they knew...
Guest:kind of what the public, what the cops, what the politicians, whatever, what the media all thought was a great drug bust.
Guest:Lots of dope, lots of money, lots of toys like cars and jewels and whatever, boats and stuff.
Guest:And they designed a system to look exactly like the opposite of that.
Marc:And that started kind of in California, right?
Marc:In Southern California?
Guest:It started not far from here, like in Canoga Park, Van Nuys.
Guest:And a couple of things happened.
Guest:This is where that town kind of migrated.
Marc:The Jalisco.
Guest:From Jalisco.
Guest:People, legit migrants, guys who were working in- It's a sugar cane town.
Guest:Right, sugar cane, avocados, stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Avocados came later, though, right?
Guest:Later, but I mean, right now, that's kind of what they do.
Guest:And they moved there.
Guest:To Canoga Park.
Guest:Canoga Park and Ben Eyes.
Guest:And a few of them had connections to the mountains of Nayarit, where the Indians grow the opium poppy.
Guest:And they knew how to cook black tar heroin.
Guest:It's a little bit like, well, no, the guys from Jalisco.
Guest:A few of these, two or three of these families.
Guest:And they knew how to – it's a little bit like a backyard barbecue kind of process.
Guest:It's not that difficult to figure out.
Guest:They begin selling this stuff as a sideline, I think, to junkies in the park, you know, cutting off little pieces of addicts who come up to them.
Guest:But a couple of things happen in L.A.
Guest:that are really important to all of us.
Guest:First of all, they're all from the same town.
Guest:So they can't kill anybody who comes up to compete with them, right?
Guest:They just got to let competition happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because they know where each other's moms live, basically.
Guest:You don't go shooting each other if you know where each other's moms live, right?
Guest:Well, then what happens is the cops begin to arrest these guys because there's more of them, and it can become more obvious.
Guest:But also really important in L.A.
Guest:is that in the...
Guest:The early 1990s, the Mexican mafia prison gang sends out directives to start taxing all the street gangs, the Latino street gangs.
Guest:They need to start taxing all the dealers in their area.
Guest:For tar?
Guest:Anything, whatever you're selling, dope of any kind.
Guest:And funnel the proceeds to the Mexican mafia.
Guest:It's a very well-documented thing.
Guest:It's a kind of a protection racket.
Guest:It's called taxing.
Guest:And it's all over Southern California.
Guest:Latino gangs are doing this for more than 20 years now.
Marc:Sending money back to Mexico.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:The Mexican Mafia is the prison gang.
Guest:They don't have any connection to Mexico.
Guest:They're called the Mexican Mafia.
Guest:It's a prison gang that really controls the Latinos, the street gangs in the prison system.
Guest:But they figured out that on the outside were all these gangs.
Guest:in this area and some others that were like willing to do their bidding, you know, like damn right, whatever you say, even though you're in prison, I'm on the street because I'm one day going to go to prison and I want to be on your good side.
Guest:And I'm also look at, I look up to you like you're some kind of major league baseball player or something like that.
Guest:So they begin to order these gangs and through the 90s, this is what happens.
Guest:They begin, all these Latino street gangs begin taxing the local dealers and funneling their money to the mafia members.
Marc:With the threat of piss
Guest:Yeah, and so in order to avoid that, the Holisco boys go to cars.
Guest:So if you're not standing on the street or in a house, it's not so easy for them to tax you.
Guest:So they go into cars, larger clientele.
Guest:They begin to move out from there.
Marc:And so that forces them- That's the basis of the business model.
Guest:Exactly, right.
Guest:Of the dispatch model.
Guest:And at the time, it was pagers, that kind of thing, pay phones and pagers.
Guest:One way or another.
Guest:But that was like back then.
Guest:And as they saturate a market, they do what any capitalist enterprise does when it sees its profits drop, and that is they expand.
Guest:They go for other markets, and that's what they did.
Guest:So in the early, well, by 1990, 91, 92, they were moving to Pomona, Ontario.
Guest:They were moving to Reno.
Guest:portland was a big place and at that time what they would do to drum up uh business is they find the old junkies or they go to the methadone clinic and they hand out understand these guys knew no english they don't know the methadone clinic world so how do they get kind of indian guides you feel like the spanish explorers use you know sure and the junkies are that and then they just find them they spread out exactly and they're the ones who take them to honolulu to portland just find the junkies yeah and they give them freed up for uh for the introduction once you figure all this shit out
Marc:When is the next epiphany that the OxyContin epidemic played directly into the evolution of the middle class white junkie phenomenon?
Marc:And also the working class and poverty class white junkie phenomenon.
Guest:That came more later when I began to...
Guest:Because the obvious question, one of the obvious questions I had out of Huntington, West Virginia was not just why is black tar heroin there, but why is there any appetite for heroin at all?
Guest:I mean, I don't consider West Virginia or didn't consider West Virginia a big heroin problem.
Guest:place, right?
Guest:I mean, it's just not, that wasn't the place, you know, Chicago, it was East LA, it was New York.
Marc:And then also in the late 80s or the 90s, you heard Portland, Seattle, but that was all part of this, right?
Guest:But I didn't see West Virginia, so my question was, why would they have any appetite at all?
Guest:And little by little, I became to realize, I was almost done with that story for the LA Times when I began to realize that
Guest:This is an even bigger, there's an even bigger story.
Marc:You're publishing these pieces because I noticed in the book, it is written in short bursts, which is great for me, that you were organized eventually.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So they were printed.
Marc:So you were writing on black tar and all of this.
Guest:And I got to the end of that story to finish that story up.
Guest:And I began to realize, you know, if I had two more, three more days worth of space, I would write about the bigger story, which is Oxycontin and however all these guys, all these addicts,
Guest:Like almost 100% of the new heroin addicts are folks who are started with pills, with pain pills through one way or another.
Guest:And I begin to think, damn, this is in a... So what I'm seeing here is actually the second half.
Guest:I backed in to the story.
Guest:Most people come to the story through the pills, you know.
Marc:So what was the moment in the garage where you were like, holy shit?
Guest:I think it was talking early, well, a couple of times.
Guest:First it was, I think, talking with, I believe it was a cop in Huntington later, and he was telling me this, and I began to think, damn, this is really big.
Guest:But it wasn't until I started the book,
Guest:uh in 2012 13 that i began to realize the whole i had no background in health covering uh reporting right i was a crime reporter and an immigration reporter and stuff like that and border reporter um and i hadn't so i know i had no back so i began to talk to um historians uh-huh of pain yeah there there is such a thing in fact that's where you started yeah
Marc:Because you knew that the oxys were coming through the pain management system.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I kind of had figured that out.
Guest:And I spoke with a great professor over at UCLA, Marsha Meldrum, who is a historian of pain, literally.
Guest:And they have a big library collection called, I can't remember the full name of it right now, but it's a collection of oral history of pain, talking to doctors and how do we treat pain and when do we recognize them.
Guest:And she was the one who kind of laid out for me
Guest:The whole history of pain that a lot of which I talk about in the book.
Guest:And then she talks about how in the 90s, a lot of these pain specialists began to lobby very hard for a very much more liberal use of these pain pills.
Guest:They were joined...
Guest:Very importantly, by certain pharmaceutical companies, especially Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin.
Marc:But but previous to that, that, you know, talking specifically about pain, nonspecific pain, pain as pain.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That what you do in the book that I thought was fascinating was that this was not a this was not a practitioner.
Marc:before you know pain was something that doctors didn't understand yes pain was something that like i don't know what to tell you i can give you this i can give you that yeah i'm sorry you have that if it's injury related it's more understandable but it's fibromyalgic or it's uh non-specific most western doctors are like i i don't know what the fuck to do here take a pill right but not not opiates necessarily
Marc:Yeah, maybe Vicodin, maybe Codeine, Tylenol, whatever, which are mild opiates.
Marc:So what became fascinating to me in the book was the history of pain is what you call the fifth vital sign.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That it became established by certain...
Guest:medical institutions as being you know something we need to treat our Hippocratic oath is to help and and we got to help these people right right and that that I learned later as I was doing the book as I got into the book I'm not sure I knew all of that that part of a journey of a book is you find new things out and you let the facts take you instead of have some of having some very concrete because people
Marc:Pain management is something in my lifetime.
Marc:It's in your lifetime.
Marc:And you sort of flesh it out in the book as how it evolved as a business and how it eventually corrupted as a business.
Marc:But what was fascinating to me all the way through it is that I'm sure from talking to the woman about the history of pain that you became mildly obsessed with the idea of the morphine molecule.
Guest:Yeah, that's kind of where the book begins to be less of a crime book.
Guest:And I begin to realize there's this unseen particle, right?
Guest:Yeah, right right in one plant that Bizarrely this plant has evolved to become absolutely essential to the dominant mammal on the planet right the right the morphing the opium poppy I'm talking about and within that opium poppy there is a morphine molecule that and within that molecule we have the the the possibility of heaven and
Guest:and hell right uh freedom and complete us enslavement uh and if uh but it's historical this is not this is not last 20 years this is hundreds of years i know this is this is kind of smoking pot smoking opium all the way back right exactly and it starts in it so it's we've got a long history as a species with this with this plant yes and and it struck me as this this
Guest:particle, this molecule could create the most blessed relief, freedom from the most tortured kind of pain.
Guest:Worst pain.
Guest:And it could also be the source of the greatest debasement, the greatest enslavement we've ever known.
Guest:People who spoiled kids who would then walk through the snow for five miles to find their junkie.
Marc:Or prostitute themselves or kill people or rob people.
Guest:Or sleep in a railroad car.
Guest:All of that in one little thing.
Guest:And I began to understand the basic question here is, can mankind have it all?
Guest:Can we have freedom from pain and freedom from addiction?
Guest:You know, all these like philosophical questions hit me that I'm not used to.
Guest:That's not a journalist's area.
Guest:And much less a crime reporter's background.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:It just doesn't make any.
Guest:That's not what you usually do.
Guest:It really took you to task as a human thinker.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And it became a big part of the book because as it turns out, we've been trying to find that pill for a long time.
Guest:That's what they thought Oxycontin was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They thought Oxycontin was the pill they could, the pill they've been trying to find, which is pain relief on the order of morphine.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No addiction, like addiction on the order of aspirin.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And they thought for years we tried as a species, but also here in the United States, tried to find this drug, this holy grail, couldn't find it.
Guest:Finally, what they decided was maybe the key is not in the drug, but in just simply a different way of administering it.
Guest:So OxyContin comes along as this drug that is going to...
Guest:because it's like leaked into your system, a time released into your system over 12 hours, that maybe a new way of administering an old drug is really the answer we were looking for.
Guest:They certainly underestimated the smarts of junkies.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But also, they also, I think, they also really, the other thing they did was they began to believe kind of in a religious fervor
Guest:this kind of religious fervor gained power within this movement.
Guest:The pain management movement.
Guest:The pain management movement to say, yes, we've got it, we've got it.
Guest:And the evidence that this would not addict people was nil.
Marc:Well, that's all through the book, and that was interesting to me because that was the journalist.
Marc:Whatever existential and philosophical conversations you were having with yourself is that what these doctors were hanging their beliefs on, that the rate of addiction is low.
Marc:If the person is in real pain.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was like this... The amazing moment in the book is like with this Dr. Jicks.
Marc:What was it?
Marc:The Jicks Johnson?
Guest:No, Herschel Jick and Jane Porter were the people who wrote it.
Guest:A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, right?
Marc:It's because... See, at that point, people wanted to believe...
Marc:I know, but it was like, but once the letter is out there, it was taken out of context.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:The information was not substantiated by any research, and it just became this... Gospel.
Marc:Gospel, and nobody... It just took its own life.
Guest:It became viral.
Guest:Yeah, the letter is just to explain to your people who are listening.
Guest:The letter says...
Guest:that this doctor has gone through a database of hospital patients and asked the question, how many received narcotic pain relievers while in hospital and how many of those got addicted to them?
Guest:And this was from 1980.
Guest:And he writes this letter saying, in my hospital database, I found 11,000 people got these medicines while in hospital and four got addicted.
Guest:The New England Journal of Medicine, in his letter to the editor, publishes this letter.
Guest:Under the headline, Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics.
Guest:The worst headline.
Guest:I mean, it's just an amazing thing because this becomes the cornerstone, the intellectual cornerstone.
Marc:It's so funny because it's really equivalent to that clickbait in a way.
Guest:Pre-clickbait.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It's like, read this letter.
Guest:Read this letter.
Guest:It doesn't mean anything.
Guest:And this guy never intended that.
Guest:He forgot about the letter.
Marc:I know.
Marc:That was the most hilarious thing about, in a darkly funny way, is when you go back to talk to him, you finally talk to him.
Marc:He's like, what?
Marc:What?
Marc:What are you talking about?
Guest:Well, by that point, but it took years for him to figure out that his letter had been cited over and over something like 900 times.
Marc:Right, it cited and used to substantiate the business model of Oxycontin, which they rammed down the country's throat.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:And Oxycontin is crucial to all this.
Guest:There would not be a heroin problem in America if it went out for Oxycontin because Oxycontin, unlike the Vicodin, the Percocets and stuff, which have Tylenol and acetaminophen in them,
Guest:So you can mess around with those pills, but if you really want to develop a very large tolerance and addiction to those, you're going to just destroy your innards, your liver and kidney.
Guest:So OxyContin has no Tylenol, no acetaminophen.
Guest:It's just straight dope, straight oxycodone, which is an opiate very similar to heroin.
Guest:So it serves to be the bridge between those low-dose pills
Guest:and heroin right it builds up people's tolerances to 200 300 400 milligrams a day so they're paying on the street after a while 50 cents to a dollar a milligram that's 100 200 300 bucks a day they are desperate to find something cheap that will take care of their addiction every day and mexican heroin is the is the is the answer but would not have gotten there
Guest:had it not been for the bridge of OxyContin.
Marc:Well, had not all those addicts been created and the pill mills created them to a degree, right?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:I mean, like, because that seems to be the bulk of it, is that, you know, once this information, this that was really misinformation, contextually speaking, of the Jicks quote... Right, right.
Marc:Once the pharmaceutical company, specifically Purdue, got hold of that, and the American Medical Association had overrode the stigma of prescribing opiates, which they were nervous to do for a reason.
Marc:See, that's the weird thing about the book, too, is that the reason there was a stigma was because they knew.
Guest:There was a good reason.
Guest:They knew.
Guest:We had 5,000 years of experience as a species with the opium.
Guest:Right, they knew.
Guest:Everybody knows that.
Guest:You know two things, great painkiller and very addictive in the same.
Guest:Common sense.
Guest:Medicine.
Guest:And docs knew that back then.
Guest:And that's why it was.
Guest:And that's why Purdue had a hell of a time because they had to override common sense, medical school teachings, kind of a collegial kind of attitude about people who prescribe those as being kind of quacks.
Guest:There's a whole lot of attitudes in the doctor's world.
Marc:Well, they found that one doctor, though, the champion, the whole- Portnoy.
Guest:Portnoy.
Marc:Russell Portnoy, right.
Guest:And you think that his intentions were pure at the beginning?
Guest:I'm not sure if pure is necessarily the word.
Guest:I would say that I don't believe him to be some kind of snidely whiplash kind of evil guy.
Guest:He was- Wanting to addict a country.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He was formed in the period when doctors would never prescribe this stuff.
Guest:I mean, they would never – people would be screaming in agony and dying of, you know, like horrible things for three months to live.
Guest:And still docs would not prescribe these pills that could give people a three-month end of life of, you know, decent freedom from pain.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so if you grow up in that, if you're an idolistic doctor and you grew up and you see that firsthand, I believe it can really sear you.
Guest:It can really affect you.
Guest:And I believe that's kind of what happened with a lot of those younger fellows.
Guest:They then began very, very irresponsibly, in my opinion, to take money from these pharmaceutical companies as well.
Guest:And that's where people begin to believe, hey, these guys' motives are questionable.
Marc:Having grown
Marc:up with a doctor, I know that they're relatively myopic.
Marc:They're not really knowledgeable in the world of addiction or psychological therapy.
Marc:And you were pretty clear in the book that the insurance company's role in this was not minor in that they limited a doctor's ability
Marc:to do his job thoroughly.
Marc:So, you know, you have Western docs who are either orthopedics or general practitioners who are dealing with chronic shoulder pain, chronic back pain, whatever the hell it is, workman's comp money, and they don't have time or the real philosophical or experience to sort of really kind of, let's see where you're at.
Guest:Plus, you know, you've got these doctors who are meeting face-to-face with these pain patients who are
Guest:insistent, begging, crying, mad, a variety of things.
Guest:And it's very difficult for you as a doctor to say, well, I got something to help you, but you can't use it because it'll addict you.
Guest:They wanted freedom or permission almost to use these drugs.
Guest:And because they had these patients coming and using up all their time that they didn't have and all this stuff.
Guest:At the same time, too, it's really important that in some areas of the country, particularly Rust Belt, Appalachian areas, the doctor is the key to a post-industrial life strategy, meaning the doctor can get you with the right...
Guest:comments on a form or the right checkboxes can get you a workers comp, can get you SSI or SDI or a variety of things like that to allow you to then go on with your life after the mill closed or the coal mine closed or the steel plant closed or whatever.
Guest:And that's why I believe the pharmaceutical companies knew that.
Guest:They knew that in certain areas, they had data that showed that doctors in those areas prescribed more than doctors in other areas.
Guest:And that's why they hit those doctors.
Guest:Those docs were already used to prescribing and going along with people that they saw who were in dire straits, who were really in serious trouble economically, sometimes physically too, but a lot of times it was more economic than physical.
Marc:But so you're saying that because they were in existential pain due to economic realities and they were hopeless.
Guest:Or they just needed that government check to get them through.
Marc:So you're saying, okay, so the doctor's signature is just a government check so they can survive, not necessarily to give them drugs.
Guest:No, in fact, at first it was more, I want that SSI or SSDI check.
Guest:So I can live.
Guest:But then the pills come out.
Guest:The pills come out in a big way and they swamp those areas.
Guest:Ohio, West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee.
Guest:And they swamp those areas.
Guest:And all of a sudden, the great thing that you receive is not that $600 or $1,000 check.
Guest:It's the Medicaid card.
Guest:That where you can go to any doctor, and now there's all these doctors wanting to prescribe these drugs, and you can get them to prescribe.
Guest:And for a $3 copay, the taxpayer will pay for you, the patient, to go to any pharmacist who will give you the drugs and get them fulfilled.
Guest:And then you can sell those on the street for eight, six, eight, ten times what they're worth.
Marc:So that begins the OxyContin economy.
Marc:But that was completely assisted and enabled by, you focus, you know, the book, the title of the book is Dreamland, and that's about a pool in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Marc:And which ironically becomes the most devastated area.
Marc:Yes, the pill mill capital of America.
Marc:Pill mill capital of America because of legislation that enabled it.
Marc:And then, you know, because of a very bankrupt and corrupt doctor who created the model, the franchise model.
Guest:That's the interesting thing about this.
Guest:You know, these when you start talking about opiates, you immediately start talking about business models because it creates customers who cannot not buy your product every day.
Guest:And so that's what I learned also in the course of writing this book.
Guest:He creates the idea of the clinic, the doctor's clinic, which is just basically printing out prescriptions, handling hundreds of patients a day, people coming from all different counties and states.
Marc:But their money is made on cash per prescript.
Marc:You got a $200 to $500.
Guest:You cannot get these prescriptions.
Guest:Federal law says you cannot get these prescriptions filled over the phone with some exceptions.
Guest:And so you've got to be in person.
Guest:So every time you go in, you've got to... And these docs begin to say, hey, no insurance accepted here.
Guest:Cash, 200, 250 bucks a day.
Guest:And that's a huge amount of money every day that you're seeing.
Guest:And, of course, you get lines out the door, people in their pajamas because they just want their dope.
Marc:They don't give a damn where they're... But these docs, the reason why it becomes dubious is they had to know.
Marc:There was no way they couldn't... Here's the thing.
Guest:Doctors viewed this as this great, great boon or great tool for their practice.
Guest:I think in the long run, it actually was a curse.
Guest:A lot of doctors, and I'm not sure about Proctor, but there are other doctors who do not start out to be scoundrels and scandalous quacks.
Guest:They thought they were helping people and little by little...
Guest:they get worn away that ethical compass that moral compass that aligns with the tolerance of these patients growing so also and the insistence damn it doc i need this yeah that kind of thing and once you get worn out on that and after a while it's like oh what the hell everyone's saying i should do this the the jaco or the the this medical institution is telling me that pain's the fifth vital sign we have to treat this
Guest:And pretty soon you just go with the flow.
Guest:Plus, the money is huge.
Guest:It's just monumental.
Guest:And after a while, those doctors who may have started out as really great... Decent guys.
Guest:Decent people get worn out and corrupted.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and then also, like I thought, another pivotal point was the doctors who knew exactly what they were getting into, that the way they hired these doctors is, because any idiot could open up a pain management clinic, they just need to find some morally bankrupt doctor to write the scripts if he still had a license.
Marc:So they would find these docs have been kicked out or accused of things in one state, but we're still licensable, I guess.
Guest:So one of the ironic things is in this area where there's no jobs and no money, presumably, and where it's very difficult to find health care, all of a sudden you get the arrival of all these doctors.
Guest:Right.
Guest:to this area, except for they're all alcoholics or drug addicts themselves, some of them.
Guest:Accused murderers.
Guest:Exactly, exactly.
Guest:And they all come, and it's like, I viewed it as, you know, when Jesus is on the cross and they give him vinegar, water, you know, give him vinegar.
Guest:That's kind of the way it was.
Guest:These crucified regions, please give us health care, and all of a sudden, who arrives?
Guest:junky docks these scoundrels these guys who are already like and or they're senile or you know it's just it's it's just this awful um um uh story of how they just well yeah and but it's all about it's and it's all about business so the model that proctor who is this massive scoundrel yeah from day one by the way but he wouldn't talk to you right
Guest:right?
Guest:No, he wanted money.
Guest:He wanted money.
Guest:He wanted me to pay him.
Marc:I was like, Hey man, I don't pay felons for a, but so that, that, that business model spreads to Florida and then that, you know, and the Florida model, which everyone heard about those pill mills, like this became a currency among these desperate and poor people was getting these pills, driving busloads of junkies to get their pills, splitting up the pills, using them as currency.
Marc:And then like, you know, the Walmarts were being pilfered daily and there were, and,
Guest:and and fencing stuff for pills that were like there was an entire yeah an entire economy built around moving these pills and robbing walmart yeah and walmart i have this theory here's my theory yeah that if in all these small towns in the in that area of columbus to the north and eastern kentucky and west virginia and all that and all these areas had there been a more um uh robust locally owned economic kind of ecosystem yeah local stores and merchants everyone knew each other
Guest:this would not have spread as fast.
Guest:It spread fast because of Walmart.
Guest:Walmart, first of all, has taken up all those stores on Main Street and plopped them down onto the floor.
Guest:So you can buy a T-bone steak and children's clothes and an Xbox and a chainsaw in the same place, right?
Guest:The same cart.
Guest:And they...
Guest:They are not as, those greeters getting $9 an hour who are 65-year-old ladies are not very, you know, they're not going to face off with some white-eyed junkie, right?
Guest:So they end up, Walmart becomes the one place where you can go and easily steal what you need for your addiction.
Guest:You don't have to go to four stores along Main Street where all the former owners would have known you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Who's the shady guy?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:We know these guys.
Guest:You're not coming in the store, let alone like I'm going to watch you.
Guest:So Walmart becomes this one place.
Guest:And so you see these pilgrimages of people.
Guest:and Portsmouth down to the Walmart to figure out how to steal their daily.
Guest:And the other thing is, OxyContin was really important in this as well because the other pills don't require like a huge amount of, they don't require a huge amount of capital outlay each day.
Guest:You want to get, you're feeling well on Vicodin, yeah, that's going to cost you, if two or three pills are going to cost you about 10 bucks.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Oxycontin ups the ante incredibly.
Guest:So now your addiction again is $100, $200.
Guest:The only place you're going to figure out where to steal $100 to $200 worth of stuff is in Walmart.
Guest:And it just so happens that in all that area, a lot of those towns had had their main retail products.
Guest:Right, almost everywhere.
Marc:But it's interesting because it's like, you know, metaphorically, you know, Walmart is the harbinger of the end of small town America.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And in this case, like almost literally.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Oxy is the death.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what ends up happening is my feeling as I got into this book was, this is why I focused on the pool.
Guest:The swimming pool in Portsmouth, Ohio, was a stand-in for all the communities that had been destroyed.
Guest:That pool was like this life-giving force.
Guest:It was one of the largest pools in America.
Guest:In the 50s?
Guest:Um, it was a place where life, the cycle of life took place.
Guest:So you were, you know, everyone like had, that was the Baytown babysitter.
Guest:You know, everyone saw each other.
Guest:You grew up under the watchful eyes of all these different people.
Guest:And last thing you want to do was get kicked out of, out of dreamland for the summer because it was like the place where everyone hung out.
Guest:And the other thing was this guy who owned it, it was like another time in America where the, where this guy was this corporate owner, he owned a fat shoe factory.
Guest:He didn't need the money from the pool.
Guest:So what did he do?
Guest:He invests in the pool itself.
Guest:more land, basketball court, picnic tables.
Guest:Responsible corporate.
Guest:Precisely, yeah.
Guest:And this guy puts the money back into the pool.
Guest:So basically life, it's the cycle of life.
Guest:You're a toddler, you're at the shallow end.
Guest:You're in middle school, you're in the middle of the pool with all your friends.
Guest:The deep end is for the high school students and the young adults.
Guest:A lot of people lost their virginity out in the fields of dreamland and their kids start again.
Guest:And once you lose that,
Guest:This is the crucial thing, it seems to me.
Guest:They lost that in 93.
Guest:They dug it up, and it's like a Joni Mitchell song.
Guest:You go there now, it's a big parking lot with O'Reilly's auto parts store there.
Guest:In 1993, they lost the steel factory.
Guest:They lost the shoe factories in 93.
Guest:Couldn't keep the pool open anymore.
Guest:It got dug up and paved over, and it was almost like they lost this –
Guest:this part of themselves or this societal immune system went away.
Guest:It was like the Indians when vulnerable to smallpox when the Europeans came over.
Guest:And so that whole town just is totally vulnerable.
Guest:Everybody goes indoors, there's no place.
Guest:Walmart takes the place of dreamland as the place where you see everybody.
Guest:Hey, not for very long.
Guest:Hey, how you doing?
Guest:That kind of thing.
Guest:But no, there's no other public place to commune, to be a part of the human society.
Guest:And everyone goes into it.
Guest:And then the pills come and just lay waste, just lay waste to that town.
Guest:But my feeling is, had they had this community that was destroyed over a period of about 15, 20 years, had that been able to stick around, these pills or the heroin would never have been the problem it became in Portsmouth.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And all over.
Marc:And I think also, you know, you sort of spend some time in the second...
Marc:Or towards the end of the book about the isolating nature of opiates and where they're done and how it's done and how it's a weird secret in your room kind of thing.
Marc:And then it evolves.
Marc:And I guess to bring the Jalisco guys back, they start to become predators around these pill mills.
Guest:Well, one of the things that happens is that I thought was wild.
Guest:One of the guys I wrote to turned out to be the most important person in the whole story, the guy called The Man.
Guest:Yeah, this guy was, I didn't know who he was.
Guest:I just wrote to him because it was on a list of an indictment.
Marc:And it was under the condition you wouldn't use his name?
Guest:Is that how that works?
Guest:Eventually, I interviewed the guy nine times.
Guest:He lives in California.
Guest:And I just said, okay, in exchange for your story, I'll just leave your name out of it for the moment until he dies.
Guest:Then I'll make it public.
Guest:His story was crucial, and I think in like the Hall of Fame of dope trafficking, he's got to be one of them because he was the guy, the Jalisco boy.
Guest:First of all, he's not from Van Nuys, and he hooks up with the Jalisco boys in prison in Nevada.
Guest:In the 70s.
Guest:Yeah, in the early 90s.
Guest:Okay, so he gets out, and they have this system, and they have labor, and they tell him, look,
Guest:We have all this stuff.
Guest:What we don't have, we don't speak English, we don't know the methadone clinic world, and we don't know the addict world.
Guest:You bring that to the table.
Guest:So he becomes almost adopted.
Guest:He's a Mexican-American guy, fluent in Spanish.
Guest:He goes down to Mexico, lives in Jalisco, has his crews up here working with his partner, and they do Reno, they do Portland, they do Denver.
Guest:Cells, they create the cells.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then he decides to go out on his own, and he is the one
Guest:who bring, by pure coincidence, there's no conspiracy theory here, he's the one who brings all that black tar heroin to Columbus, Ohio first.
Guest:In 1998, summer of 98.
Guest:I've tracked this, I think I pretty much know almost exactly when he got there, like probably July of 1998.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He gets there just as we've got a pain revolution in America saying we've got an epidemic of pain, we've got to do something about it, just as pain is the fifth vital sign, just as all these pain specialists are saying we've got to use all these drugs that we're not too afraid to use up to now, just as Purdue Pharma is marketing OxyContin as if we're over-the-counter stuff.
Guest:and just as the pill mills are exploding beginning to explode as a as a as a business model he arrives in columbus so the reason i focused on on the jalisco boys is not because they're the only heroin traffickers in america or even the only mexican black tar heroin traffickers they are though the kind of vanguard of this new way of selling dope which is without violence which is you know customer service yeah trying to but they wouldn't let people stop exactly oh you're quitting here's a little here's a
Guest:A gift, yeah, because I love you so much.
Guest:Here, keep using my dope, you know.
Guest:But they're also, very important in all this, they're also the first ones to recognize the enormous heroin market that overprescribing of opiate painkillers implies and to then systematically exploit it.
Guest:So, he follows the pills.
Guest:He goes and, where are the pills going?
Guest:Charlotte, okay, Indianapolis, Nashville, places like that.
Guest:And then, of course, from there, it explodes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think you're very empathetic in a way to these kids who are coming up.
Marc:The law enforcement's constantly talking about, we can't stop it because they keep sending more of these farm kids.
Marc:And all they're looking for, this is the difference really, that's sort of interesting.
Marc:It's somewhat similar to America, but it is uniquely Mexican in the way that what implies success there.
Marc:There is some of it here in America, but all these guys want is 501 Levi's, a nice hat, a horse, a house with a second story.
Marc:These are all things, but that's really the end game for them.
Guest:They are addicted to something.
Guest:It doesn't happen to be a black tar heroine.
Guest:They are addicted to the idea of coming home, the king, being a big shot.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Coming home, the king and giving away perfume to your girls and black.
Marc:But I didn't get the sense in reading it that that any of them necessarily thought it would be forever.
Guest:No, I don't think anyone thought it would be forever.
Guest:They were trying to get the certain things that would allow them to be men of standing.
Guest:Property, a nice used truck, maybe some livestock.
Guest:Yeah, definitely livestock.
Guest:They wanted that.
Guest:But above all, a lot of them went with the idea, I'm going to buy a taxi.
Guest:I'm going to buy a little business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ends up, none of that happened.
Guest:Very few of them.
Guest:Because they come back and they want to be the king and they begin to spread their money around and blow their money on, they get this narcotic boost from being the guy who pays for the beer in the plaza all night and all the girls want to talk to him.
Guest:Right, which is exactly what would have gotten them caught as drug dealers here.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:They don't party here.
Marc:They wait to spend their money back home.
Marc:And that was the interesting thing.
Marc:They're all on salary.
Marc:They don't live with anything.
Marc:They're sleeping on the floor.
Marc:You got a dispatch.
Marc:They get paid.
Marc:They move the product.
Marc:And very few of them are on the dope.
Guest:Heroin is still a very stigmatized drug in Mexico.
Guest:People are on cocaine, people use meth because a lot of that has been created or stayed in the country before coming here.
Guest:And marijuana is smoked by relatively few folks.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, marijuana is still viewed as kind of like a scuzzy, almost like a child molester.
Guest:Marijuana is kind of like a child molester.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the scuzziest of all is certainly heroin.
Guest:I heard of one guy getting addicted to his own product.
Guest:Everybody else was just into alcohol.
Guest:And they were also into sending their money back constantly because they never want to get busted with lots of money.
Guest:And some of these dopers were kind of like the guys.
Right.
Guest:Oh, no, of course.
Guest:See, here's the thing.
Guest:Here's the thing about this.
Guest:These guys are not cartel killers.
Guest:This system works because it channels that desire of this young kid who's got nothing, who's got these cheap pair of jeans and no girl will talk to him.
Guest:It channels that desire to become the guy or a guy of respect.
Guest:Anybody can use this system.
Guest:You don't have to.
Guest:A cartel is like a GM.
Guest:Right, you got to kill somebody.
Guest:And it's a very tough way to make a living, really, if you're at the bottom.
Guest:And so these guys are seeing this system like, hell yeah, I'll do that.
Guest:Cash.
Guest:And the other thing is, had there been another big job that kind of became popular in that area, these guys might all be landscapers in Dallas.
Guest:It just so happened that in this one village, where everybody does such a common thing, as I said, everybody does the same job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In this one village, you get guys who are making money selling heroin and everybody sees a whole generation, probably really two generations of guys grow up in that town seeing this as the way out.
Guest:And it's an amazing transformation of the town, but it's a middle class transformation.
Guest:It's not like people have...
Guest:Maseratis and zoos.
Guest:They have a better house.
Guest:They have a nice Dodge truck.
Guest:And they have more money spread around, but not like their Chapo Guzman or something.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And I think it was important towards the end of the book, you sort of captured, you dealt a little bit with high school sports and also about basically what really turned the tide, unfortunately,
Marc:But I think is right.
Marc:Culturally, there's a racial divide implicit in dealing with this problem because it was all of a sudden a middle class white problem.
Marc:Whereas crack and the old timey heroin, there was not the attention paid.
Guest:It's a complicated thing because you're absolutely right.
Guest:Most of the people, I would say 90 plus percent of the people getting addicted heroin nowadays,
Guest:They could be low-income whites in Appalachia.
Guest:They could be Charlotte's, you know, Nouveau Riche.
Guest:But whatever the case, they're white.
Guest:And so this has also created a new way of viewing addiction.
Guest:Which is good.
Guest:Which is good, which is good.
Guest:It's a way of saying, we don't, you know, we tried, this story is about isolation versus community, right?
Guest:So for the longest time we've tried, we had the silver bullet of every pain you have, we use this pill for.
Guest:Every addict needs to be thrown in jail.
Guest:There's one way of doing everything.
Guest:And now we're coming to an idea like, no, we need to add new things.
Guest:And so what's happened is people are coming to view this as a disease, treatment.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:It is necessary, finally, after many years.
Guest:These are red states.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's where it's most interesting to watch, yeah, to see how red states... Because it was all tough love, jail culture.
Guest:Exactly, and that's where tough on crime had been political dogma.
Guest:No one questioned it.
Guest:If you questioned it, someone to your right was going to out-tough you on crime.
Guest:And now, for example, in northern Kentucky, where I've spent a lot of time, it's just south of Cincinnati.
Guest:Guys, you cannot get elected in these counties as a Democrat, but you also cannot get elected as a Republican who wants to be just throw away the key, kind of the old style.
Marc:they have heroin courts now exactly right and they have and they have a whole new change like people are coming to understand and it's really like kind of you know people now who are addicted well that's pastor's son the football right but that took a lot you know you you talk about in the book that the stigma still was there with heroin that you had these parents that were like their kids died of a gunshot wound a self-inflicted gunshot wound by accident or a heart attack
Marc:But no one was willing to say.
Marc:Or died suddenly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then they all started to find out that this tar had gotten hold of them.
Marc:As a guy who's sober, it's no big mystery.
Marc:Once you smoke that shit for the first time because some of your friend turns you on to it or whatever, once it becomes easy, like dope.
Marc:I mean, needles are still rough.
Marc:But I think a lot of those, it starts out with smoking that shit.
Marc:You know, foil in it.
Marc:And, you know, and then the needles like that, that's all the relationship.
Marc:But it seems that that really blew up too.
Marc:That needles became destigmatized among a class of people that would never have thought.
Guest:And that was the horrifying thing to the parents.
Guest:When I was in the middle of this book, my wife and I talked a lot about how it was going and what the response to it would be.
Guest:And we were both kind of convinced that the book would come out and die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because nobody...
Guest:The parents who had lost kids or kids were addicted, very, very few of them wanted to talk about it.
Guest:It was like this silence.
Guest:Everybody around the country had these kids dying and nobody, it was like the plague, but nobody wanted to talk about it.
Guest:This one guy told me, you know, his kid had died.
Guest:He said, all around this country, there are probably millions of parents who go to bed every night in the darkness of their bedroom, holding onto a floating album, crying.
Guest:And their biggest fear is that everybody else will figure out how their kid actually died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a sad, tough image that I held.
Guest:But the truth was I never – I really thought that that was the way the book was going to be received.
Guest:It's like no one wanted to talk about this.
Guest:I was wandering around America seeing all this shit, you know, and no one wants to talk about it.
Guest:And I would say one of the gratifying, beautiful, sweet things is that since the book's come out –
Guest:the opposite has happened and i cannot tell you it's like this amazing i go to these book signings uh it's a it's a beautiful grandparents come up hold my hand don't want to let it go hug me and i'm like i i was not expecting i was expecting i was expecting people to say yeah whatever and and let's move on because no one gives a shit about this topic right it's junkies right right and the truth is
Guest:Well, I felt that that was going to happen and it didn't.
Guest:And since then, since the book came out, April of 2015, it's just been spooky because I felt all alone.
Guest:I remember feeling so alone.
Guest:Nobody was talking about this.
Guest:And even the parents, I'm in the media, if you can't get parents to talk about how their kid died, you have lost the battle.
Guest:No one gives a shit.
Guest:And the politicians began to pay attention.
Guest:You saw the Republican candidates.
Guest:Yeah, all these guys.
Guest:But in Ohio, he passed legislation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kasich was really great.
Guest:He passed Medicare, universal Medicare, against the opposition of his own party's state legislature, and largely to provide a treatment for every Ohioan, basically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought that was a pretty gutsy thing to do.
Guest:But it was rare the politician wanted to talk about this because the parents were mortified.
Guest:But now what you're seeing, and I know it must be so hard for these parents, and I feel for them when they do this, but they put in their obituary the truth.
Guest:Like they'll say he died, and then at the bottom he lost his battle with addiction, with heroin, remembered parents, all that kind of thing.
Guest:I put those up on Facebook now whenever I see them because I know how,
Guest:devastating first of all just to lose a child I have a child my own and I just don't know how you go on honestly but also to lose it to something so fucking shitty as as black tar heroin or pills or this kind of addiction and that what that means is once when they've died it means you really have been going through five years of torture of the kid ending up in jail and
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Stealing from you.
Guest:Stealing from the grandmother, all that stuff.
Marc:And you did amazing research with the people that were sort of like so many different disciplines in areas of government and law enforcement, you know, from the state coroner's office to the city coroner's office to the DEA to the courts themselves.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was the other thing about, you know, that given we live in this culture where everything is so fucking interconnected, it's so porous, there's no boundaries, you know, transparency is almost compulsive, that all these things could be going on simultaneously with no fucking communication at all to put it all together, and it takes a reporter to do that.
Guest:But see, that's the thing.
Guest:This is all about, the drug itself is kind of like the symbol or the barometer of our times, our own isolation.
Guest:Heroin is the most isolating thing.
Guest:the most isolating drug.
Guest:One of the things I noticed as I was doing this story was I was in the middle of it and I was realizing, you know, the only people I'm talking to are people with a government paycheck, government workers.
Guest:This at a time when we have done our utmost
Guest:to laugh at government, to destroy government, to call government the problem.
Guest:Here we are, the thin line between us and complete opiate breakdown are coroners, public health nurses, ER docs from county hospitals, cops, DEA, prosecutors, jailers, courts, etc.
Guest:We have come from a time, for the last 35 years, we have exalted
Guest:public sec the private sector we have said oh wall street thank god you know you are wonderful you're so efficient private sector is so efficient so so power job creating and government you're a bunch of dunderheads you're a bunch of losers you're a bunch of all this kind of stuff and we don't want and you know crucially and all that we don't want to pay taxes that helps us allow allows us to understand to to rationalize how we don't want to pay taxes well because they're a bunch of incompetence and government
Guest:And the truth is, this is the story of the private sector capitalism gone completely awry.
Guest:They killed the towns.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:All the profits go to private companies, the private sector.
Guest:All the costs, complete socialized- No corporate responsibility.
Guest:None whatsoever.
Guest:And at the same time, all the costs are borne by-
Guest:jails, ERs, coroners, et cetera, et cetera, you can name them.
Guest:And to me, it felt like this was also the bigger story, that we had spent 35 years of saying government was the problem, the private sector, we should exalt it, all these people make so much money.
Guest:I think basically Donald Trump is the outgrowth of that attitude.
Guest:It doesn't matter what he says, he's made a lot of money, right?
Marc:I think, I don't know.
Marc:He's the equivalent.
Marc:And what's interesting about that, and I talked about a little bit on this podcast, is that the people that blindly vote for them are the people that are angry and hopeless and feel like their way of life is diminishing.
Marc:The same people that get strung out in the lower class on oxys and who are filled with nothing but hate for themselves and for a system that's gotten away from them.
Marc:And he somehow, because of his tone, they feel like he speaks.
Guest:And I really think I would love to see a survey of how many people who support Donald Trump have opiate addiction in their family, not because it addles their brain.
Guest:That's what I mean.
Guest:It means what I mean is their their American dream has collapsed.
Guest:How much part of that is opiate addiction?
Guest:Because it has a way of destroying.
Guest:you know, any brightness in your life.
Guest:Or your kid is addicted or your cousin is addicted.
Marc:Well, if it's not the middle class and the lower class, it's like it is an indicator of despair.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And also, but also kind of, yeah, an indicator and also some, of course, the cause of it sometimes too.
Guest:Because once you get involved in it.
Guest:Once you get involved in it, it's not the addict who gets addicted.
Guest:It's the entire family.
Guest:It's the grandmother and the uncles.
Marc:I thought it was fairly... I was crying at the end because I'm very sensitive to this stuff after spending 17 years of my life in meetings and being wired to understand that struggle and the sensitivity to it.
Marc:That now you have...
Marc:A sort of re-engagement with responsible pain management that is multidisciplinary, you know, certainly within the Veterans Administration and within some of the original pain management ideas, you know, around social work, psychology, diet, exercise, all that stuff, which was essential.
Marc:And still you have a hard time getting insurance companies to pay for that stuff.
Marc:And then, you know, alongside of that, you've got in Ohio, there's a rebuilding going on and that some of the junkies are getting help and they're coming back to the town center.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's another story.
Guest:Not that the first story doesn't exist anymore.
Guest:It's just that it's no longer monopolizes the town.
Guest:And I went back to Portsmouth.
Guest:You know, when I was writing the book, I was very conscious of the fact that I did not want to write a book that was about despair and destruction and degradation and end of story.
Guest:You can't write a story like that.
Guest:I wouldn't want to read it myself if I wrote it.
Guest:And so I was very interested in learning or seeing where a hopeful sign might be.
Guest:But I'm a reporter.
Guest:I don't write for Hallmark Cards.
Guest:I don't write for Chamber of Commerce.
Guest:So I needed to find something that was real.
Guest:And so it was in Portsmouth that was surprising enough.
Guest:the place where I found it.
Guest:Because if you look on the surface, Portsmouth looks pretty bombed out.
Guest:There's still hookers by the tracks, a lot of abandoned buildings, not much community there.
Guest:But as I went back, I went to Portsmouth, Ohio six times.
Guest:Great town.
Guest:I met some fantastic, really generous people when I was there.
Guest:And what they showed me or what I discovered was that there was finally, once you separate supply from the addict, once you cut down on those pill mills and get rid of them.
Marc:And legislation did that.
Guest:And the legislation did that.
Guest:Then, of course, the DEA comes in and shuts them all down and prosecutes these guys.
Guest:Most of them are in prison now.
Guest:You get breathing room.
Guest:The addict doesn't have the dope right in his face, you know, and has a chance.
Guest:And when you get that, more and more people, by the time I was there, the last time I was there, it was 2,000 people were in recovery for opiate addiction in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Guest:That's about the 10th of the town.
Guest:Shows you how widespread it was.
Guest:That does not mean that there are great jobs to be had in Portsmouth yet, or there's not a lot of addicts still, or there's not a lot of heroin.
Guest:It just means that there's not the, as one woman put it, it just means that it's the story of
Guest:of let's get high all day, steal the copper wire and get high all day is not the only narrative in town anymore.
Guest:And you're seeing people kind of break away from, it seems to me the town believed the dependency dogma that everyone else was trying to shove down its throat, that Wall Street and University of Chicago Economic School said, we are no longer a country of manufacturing and we're a country of financial services.
Guest:And Portsmouth bought that.
Guest:And let all those jobs go.
Guest:And spent 30 years bickering and recalling and all kinds of crap.
Guest:And now it seems to me the town has done the crucial first step, which is to take control of its own future and not believe the bullshit.
Guest:And that's why... On a town government.
Guest:Town government, but also that's why I love the story, man.
Guest:This has brought tears to my eyes.
Guest:The shoelace factory?
Guest:The shoelace factory, man.
Guest:Before they would just say...
Guest:You know, a town wanted, a business was going, oh, well, okay, what can we do?
Guest:Woe is us.
Guest:You know, the fatalism was drenching in the town.
Guest:And this time, the last, this was the largest shoelace manufacturer in America in its heyday.
Guest:Still a very competent and well-run company up to the point when certain of the family that owned it took over and then began to run downhill.
Guest:The guys, folks in town, just common ordinary schmoes, like an insurance agent, a lawyer, construction contractor, they say, no, we cannot allow this to happen anymore.
Guest:You know, damn it.
Guest:And so they pull their money and they buy it out of bankruptcy and they employ all these people.
Guest:And all of a sudden that town has like an example of how not to be an addict.
Guest:How not to be fatalistic and inert and beaten down.
Guest:And now they're exporting the shoelaces to Taiwan and to Mexico and Italy and places like that.
Guest:And they've got their fantastic company.
Guest:Mitchell Lace?
Guest:It's called Mitchell Lace.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they changed the name when they were out of bankruptcy to Soul Choice.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But that was almost part of, I didn't think of that at first as a heroine story, but really it is, you know, it's like you saying as a community, we're done taking the crap that tells us that everything that we do is pointless or history.
Guest:yesterday's news and might as well let go of it.
Guest:And we're about ready now to take control of our own life, which is opposite of what an addict does, right?
Guest:An addict kind of relinquishes all control to the enslavement, to the molecule, to the dope.
Marc:And also it's easy to be cynical like that.
Marc:Well, that's a horrible part about this story is that, you know, when, you know, crack and heroin and cocaine and a lot of that stuff, you know, not so much cocaine because of where that went, but certainly crack and the original heroin when it was kept in the lower classes or in the black communities, there was a cynicism and a cultural racism around like who gives a shit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So now like even, and it took a decade for this awareness to come.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because all of a sudden, you know, and even the wealthy who were losing people were unwilling to
Guest:But a lot of, see, had we paid attention to our great canaries in our coal mine in this story, which is Appalachia, we would have noticed this years and years ago and really done some.
Guest:But we're used to, as a culture, it's low-income whites.
Guest:No one gives a damn about Appalachia.
Guest:right and and rust belt places though right they lost they're losers right right they just this is evolution exactly right and so why do we care about them well we had we paid attention we might have spared the rest of the country this have we have we ratcheted back significantly on how liberally we prescribe these pills which is the whole problem I mean this is the first the first thing where where the first drug scourge that doesn't start with street mafias and drug dealers that
Marc:But also what's interesting, though, about this particular drug scourge is there was a racial component implicit in the marketing scheme, is that these Jalisco boys were told on the top-down, don't sell to blacks.
Guest:Yeah, don't sell to blacks or Mexicans.
Guest:But what's interesting to me as well is that...
Guest:We would not be discussing treatment, it seems to me, as an alternative if this scourge had the same amount of violence associated that crack had.
Guest:It doesn't seem to me reasonable to assume that.
Guest:This has changed America because it's quiet.
Guest:Yeah, and it's also young, white, well-adjusted kids.
Yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's like football is a gateway to heroin addiction in America today.
Guest:That's an amazing statement, but I believe it to be true.
Guest:Well, you've proved it a little bit in your book.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And all across the country, you see this.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because that's how you treat pain now with these massive doses of pills.
Guest:And that's how you get these guys back on the field.
Guest:But to me, this all is about how it seems to me that heroin is one of the most important forces for change.
Marc:in America today.
Marc:I felt that at the end of the book and it's like I couldn't put it down.
Marc:But I think it's really one of those books that will change anyone's mind, not just about drugs or about business or anything else, but about what the fuck happened to America.
Guest:You know, midway through the book, that was my realization.
Guest:This is not about dope.
Guest:This is not a crime story.
Guest:This is what we've become as Americans.
Guest:We've become so isolated.
Guest:Consumption is the road to happiness.
Guest:The government is the problem.
Guest:The private sector, we applaud any damn thing they do.
Guest:Never send them to jail for anything, apparently.
Guest:And heroin is the poster child, is the expression of all those values we've fostered over the last 35 years.
Guest:The heroin addict is the guy who gets addicted to heroin, becomes narcissistic, hyper-consumer of product, you know, and the bedroom.
Guest:In his mind.
Guest:exactly right of course and the bedroom is now the hallmark institution of this it's not the crack house it's not shooting gallery it's the bedroom where everyone grew up parents exactly and all the parents thought you were safer because no one wants to go outside we have this horrible fear no one's outside no one's playing in the streets we're all terrified of what the kid couldn't endure or suffer a skin knee or something like that outside and
Guest:And so they bring them inside.
Guest:It's in the bedroom where kids are hiding their dope, shooting up their dope, and dying.
Guest:Private bedrooms are like the hallmark institution of this whole epidemic.
Guest:And it's like this shows us who we become.
Guest:Heroin kind of shows us who we become.
Guest:But it's also very important, very important to...
Guest:say this it's about the only issue on which republicans democrats can actually come together and find some kind of uh common ground and so maybe within heroin there is some uh optimism or positivity maybe as one woman said maybe at the end if we become more communally minded if we don't applaud the private sector everything uh everything they do and all this maybe in the end and maybe if we raise our kids with a more communal way
Guest:Maybe in the end, we will have heroin to thank.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Well, it was important work and it's great work.
Guest:Oh, man, thanks very much.
Guest:I really appreciate your interest.
Guest:Thanks a lot, man.
Marc:What a great conversation.
Marc:What a great book.
Marc:Dark, not entirely hopeful, but there is some glimmers of hope that have to do with changing legislation, changing how we look at drug addiction, changing some laws, progress.
Marc:Progress against closed-mindedness.
Marc:Make sure you vote tomorrow.
Marc:And thanks again to Sam.
Marc:Really enjoyed talking to him.
Marc:We've got something special for you on Wednesday.
Marc:If you need a little comedown after the election, we're posting the special show we made a year ago called Lauren Stories.
Marc:The episode has only been available for Howl Premium subscribers, but on Wednesday, you can get it right here in the WTF podcast feed.
Marc:So enjoy that.
Marc:All right?
Marc:I'm gonna play some guitar a little bit.
Marc:This is the last guitar I'll play before the election.
Marc:So?
Marc:So what?
Guest:.
Guest:.
.
Marc:Boomer lives!