Light Up the Night: America's Overdose Crisis and the Drug Users Fighting for Survival

by Travis Lupick

A revelatory, moving narrative that offers a harrowing critique of the war on drugs from voices seldom heard in the conversation: drug users who are working on the front lines to reduce overdose deaths

Media coverage has established a clear narrative of the overdose crisis: In the 1990s, pharmaceutical corporations flooded America with powerful narcotics while lying about their risk; many patients developed addictions to prescription opioids; then, as access was restricted, waves of people turned to the streets and began using heroin and, later, the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl.

But that’s not the whole story. It fails to acknowledge how the war on drugs has exacerbated the crisis and leaves out one crucial voice: that of drug users themselves.

Across the country, people who use drugs are organizing in response to a record number of overdose deaths. They are banding together to save lives and demanding equal rights. Set against the backdrop of the overdose crisis, Light Up the Night provides an intimate look at how users navigate the policies that criminalize them. It chronicles a rising movement that’s fighting to save lives, end stigma, and inspire commonsense policy reform.

Told through embedded reporting focused on two activists, Jess Tilley in Massachusetts and Louise Vincent in North Carolina, this is the story of the courageous people stepping in where government has failed. They are standing on the front lines of an underground effort to help people with addictions use drugs safely, reduce harms, and live with dignity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Drugs

274 pages, Hardcover

Published January 4, 2022

About the author

Travis Lupick is an author and award-winning journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Vice Magazine, among others.
He is the author of Light Up the Night: America’s Overdose Crisis and the Drug Users Fighting for Survival (the New Press, 2022), and Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018).
Lupick previously spent 10 years as a staff reporter for the Georgia Straight newspaper in Vancouver. For his reporting on Canada’s opioid crisis, Lupick received the Canadian Association of Journalists’ prestigious Don McGillivray award for best overall investigative report of 2016. For Fighting for Space, he received the 2018 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature and nominations for the 2018 B.C. Book Award and City of Vancouver Book Award.
He has also worked as a journalist in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Malawi, Nepal, Bhutan, Peru, and Honduras.
Twitter: @tlupick

Reviews

[LilyRose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Light Up the Night by Travis Lupick is a poignant and powerful nonfiction book that explores addiction and drug use. The book follows the intimate, personal perspective of two women and activists, Jess Tilley and Louise Vincent in America. They are two figures on the frontlines of an underground effort to reshape, change and protect individuals who like them use drugs. They confront policies and laws in the ‘war on drugs’ which negatively impact and harm drug users. They also face the stigma and shame attached to those who use drugs including from medical professionals the police. These are two brave women who have suffered trauma and tragedy but stand up each day to create a safe space, offer love and no judgment and ultimately prevent drug overdoses. The book explores the origin of the drug crisis, from the 1990’s when pharmaceutical corporations drowned America in narcotics, people grew addicted to prescription opioids and when this market was restricted they turned to heroin which without regulation contains dangerous levels of synthetic opioid fentanyl. But, this book also expands that narrative by examining the war on drugs and the impact from the drug users themselves. It is a painful, essential read for fans of nonfiction books that explore social, health and political issues. We need to hear more of these voices 4.5 Stars ✨

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

[Stephen Hui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful reporting and excellent storytelling. Essential reading on the overdose crisis and harm reduction.

[April Bowers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was well written and really opened my eyes to progress being made "behind the scenes " of harm reduction in the US

[The_J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beware the hope of high expectations. This is a story related by an unreliable narrator (to a seemingly credulous transcriber), but who even in here air brushed rendition of her life, is a decades long heroin user and dealer, birthed two kids who exited the womb suffering from withdrawal (at least one would eventually died from an overdose), appears to have mooched off of a plethora of programs for those afflicted by drugs, spread MRSA, and lost most of a leg. But at least almost every male in her story was a bad guy, except perhaps for the ones over-dosing or killing themselves because of drugs. This is a story that would seem to inspire one to believe that excising a cancer from the body public might be better than having it spread like a Typhoid (Herion/Coke/Fentanyl) Mary.

[!-!-! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worthwhile reporting, but frustratingly hagiographic. Leans heavily on descriptions of excited early organizers.