I previously wrote about pain medicine ideas that Sam Quinones presents in his book Dreamland. He is critical of the idea that we can take a pill to alleviate chronic pain without making substantial changes in our lives to address the root cause of our pain. Even if we can’t completely stop chronic pain by changing our habits, our environment, and our lifestyles, Quinones shares information which suggests that our experience of pain is connected to many parts of our lives, and that we can change how we think about and relate to pain, even if we cannot eliminate it completely. This is a holistic approach to pain and pain management that Quinones thinks is a crucial piece for understanding our nation’s current opioid epidemic.
Chronic pain and its mismanagement is a common route to opioid addiction. Quinones views opioid addictions similarly to how he views chronic pain. In his book he writes, “Chronic pain was probably best treated not by one pill but holistically. In the same way, the antidote to heroin wasn’t so much Naloxone; it was community.”
Naloxone is a drug that helps prevent opioid overdoses by binding to opioid receptors in the body to block the effect of opioids like heroin. This drug has helped save thousands of lives, but on its own it won’t stop addiction. Quinones argues that a big problem with addiction is the way in which we hide it from others, whether it is addiction to drugs, gambling, or something else, we don’t allow anyone to know about our addiction. Without talking about addiction, without acknowledging that it has had impacts on our families and lives, and without having meaningful connections with others, we languish in our isolation and addiction.
The argument that Quinones makes in his book is that we need more community. We need more things in our lives where we interact meaningfully with others. We need to find more ways to be in service to other people, to work together for meaningful causes, and to have greater social connections with the people around us. By developing meaningful relationships with others, we provide community for everyone, and that helps push back against the forces that drive toward isolation and drive many of us toward substance addiction. Community provides us the space to discuss our challenges, our addictions, and our discontents, and hopefully gives us the chance to build constructive spaces in which we can connect and find solutions to problems that we cannot find in isolation.
Novel Learning 