Getting Wrecked: Women, Incarceration, and the American Opioid Crisis

by Kimberly Sue

Getting Wrecked provides a rich ethnographic account of women battling addiction as they cycle through jail, prison, and community treatment programs in Massachusetts. As incarceration has become a predominant American social policy for managing the problem of drug use, including the opioid epidemic, this book examines how prisons and jails have attempted concurrent programs of punishment and treatment to deal with inmates struggling with a diagnosis of substance use disorder. An addiction physician and medical anthropologist, Kimberly Sue powerfully illustrates the impacts of incarceration on women’s lives as they seek well-being and better health while confronting lives marked by structural violence, gender inequity, and ongoing trauma.


 

Genres: Nonfiction, Drugs, Social Justice, Anthropology, Education, Addiction

260 pages, Paperback

Published September 24, 2019

Reviews

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing read and important call to action for healthcare professionals to leave their "ivory tower" of a clinical setting and meet folks with OUD where they're at. A must read for anyone interested in addiction, the criminal (in)justice system, or just systemically and structurally disenfranchised populations more broadly.

[Harper Prentice · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Taking heroin intravenously was the best possible feeling in the world. ‘It was love.’ She declared. ‘It was the best thing I’ll feel for the rest of my life.” The heroin lifted her out of a life of depression and trauma that had started at twelve…She just felt relief from the weight of the world, the constant burdens presented by everyday life.”
“The prison believes that emphasizing the awareness and power of one’s inner self to make positive healthy decision is adequate treatment for opioid use disorder.”
“I just wanted to stay in this room, in a coma, please. I want to be comatose. I don’t even want to be awake right now.”
“Tina was again on her own, as she always seemed to be…Heroin is what she had always used to treat just feelings of distress.”
“Casting Tina’s situation as essentially a failure of self-will also obviates recognizing the political economy of addiction and how addiction is a culturally mediated and produced affliction; her failures are her own moral responsibility and a reflection of low internal stores of strength and willpower, not a harsh, gendered outcome of trauma or multigenerational poverty.”

A necessary book that focuses on how addiction, particularly opioid addiction, is treated by the criminal legal system and the gendered framing of addiction. The book emphasizes the need for harm reduction, community treatment programs, and questions the legitimacy of forced institutionalization, particularly in a violent carceral states that views women with opioid use disorder as deviants from society and deeply broken individuals, perhaps beyond “savings.”

Fuck Mayor Cherelle Parker for not funding needle exchanges and just ignoring the drug and mental health crisis in Philly and instead demonizing people struggling with addiction, poverty, and mental crises. Fuck that

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a very important (I would argue essential) look at how a specific population of incarcerated people is treated and their barriers to achieving health and stability.

Sue offers a very comprehensive view of the lives of women suffering from Opiate Use Disorder who are or who have been imprisoned, including the childhood factors that may have contributed to their drug use and the daily threats of violence they are under. She narrates the lives of the people she interviews with great compassion and isn't afraid to ask hard questions about the things she's hearing. She examines the shortcomings of trauma informed approaches, the dearth of access to buprenorphine and suboxone, and the the perils of release from incarceration without a plan in place to support recovery. At times, this book is a heartbreaking read, but these are the kinds of issues that we need to be aware of and considering how to address in our own communities. Therefore, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting to study Opiate Use Disorder, incarceration, or both.

[Rach]

Dr. Sue is the coolest. Knowing there are people like her inspires so much hope for what’s possible as we do this interdisciplinary work toward health justice for all. This is a great book; specific in scope but handles the myriad spokes of the topic excellently—see the final chapter specifically, which I would highly recommend to anyone.

[RLM]

Added because of this NPR interview with the author.

[Campbell Erickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An in-depth and often difficult ethnographic account of the opioid crisis in Boston. Dr. Sue is a masterful anthropologist and applied clinician with lots of compassion

[Eden Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am so tired.

[Yisrael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Caters to a very specific audience. Getting Wrecked is incredibly graphic, holding nothing back from the terrible opioid crisis. Sue demonstrates astounding ethos in her work and study from numerous perspectives, both academically and personal research & experiences. However, she doesn't offer fair looks on the other side of the aisle, and is at times entrenched in her own views and perspective. Justifiable perhaps given her experience, but not in a way that is convincing or engaging for the reader. Then again, I had to read this for school, which perhaps gave me an unfair negative attitude.

[Dominic Piacentini · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging and heartbreaking examination of the role prisons and prison-like healthcare institutions play in the lives of women who use drugs. Sue's clinical and ethnographic gaze shows how these state-backed entities "let die" women even if they offer a "carceral embrace" as jails and prisons adopt the language of recovery without actually being a community of care. The intellectual critique of state power is balanced and made viscerally tangible by Sue's deeply relational and ethnographic work with women in the midst of it all. I would certainly recommend to anyone in public health or social work.