Well hello hello good people! I’ve got some exciting news here on the blog today, as this marks the begging of a new and somewhat personal blog series here on GPD.

For those of you who have been reading for some time now, you may remember me mentioning my brother’s article about his experience with opioid addiction, and my subsequent references to the book deal that came out of it.  That little manuscript has finally taken shape in to a full fledged book called Addiction Nation, and is due out June 11th.

In honor of its publication we thought it would be fun to do some blog posts on some of the studies he uses throughout the book. I got to play science editor during the writing process, and my brother and I talked for months about how to properly represent studies in a book that wasn’t actually a science book. In this blog series I wanted to actually go a little further in to some of those conversations….you know, what made it in, what got cut, why certain things are phrased the way they are, why certain studies were picked for use. The whole book writing and editing process was totally unfamiliar to me until I went through it by proxy, so I thought it would be fun to share some of the discussions we had along the way. Tim will be joining me on these posts to tell you a little more about his thought process while writing as well.

Want to know more? Okay, here are the details!

The book itself:
The full title is “Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals about us”, and it’s got a good cover:

The book is part memoir/part sociology of addiction/part theological treatise/part a lot of things. Here’s how Tim explains it in his intro:

But this is not a memoir, although it does tell parts of my story. Nor is this a self-help book, although I do hope it is helpful. Addiction Nation is not a complete history of the opioid crisis or public policy manifesto, although it will provide insight into both. It is not a scientific analysis or a medical diagnostic manual, but it does try to use the perspectives as tools.

This book is the story of someone who has stood at the edge. It is an exploration of what this crisis says about us, all of us.

My involvement:
Since I’ve been correcting the science citations of everyone around me for years, my brother thought it would be wise to let me read during the editing phase rather than after the fact when it was too late to change anything. Despite science not really being the point of the book, my brother didn’t want to fall in to the “attempt to use science to bolster your claims but don’t get anything right but the name of the paper” trap so many nonfiction writers fall in to.

I had intended to have Tim introduce himself this week, but he actually got married yesterday (congrats bro!!!!) and was a little too preoccupied to write anything. Excuses excuses.

Alright, so there you have it! We have four posts planned so far on a few different topics (links added as the posts are written):

1. Week 1: The Numbers Behind the Crisis
2. Week 2: What Hurts, What Helps
3. Week 3: Controversial or Disputed Research
4. Week 4: Recovery and Hope

Looking forward to introducing my bro next week!