The addiction memoir once occupied a space in the culture not far removed from the celebrity tell-all or the polygamous-cult exposé. These books were popular insofar as the experiences they described—the first hits, the rock bottoms, the fragile redemptions—were comfortably remote from the median American experience. Today, opioid addiction is as mundane as high cholesterol, and readerly attention has sensibly shifted. The addiction memoir has been supplanted by the addiction explainer: sprawling accounts of corporate malfeasance, books and podcasts and streaming series purporting to show how the Sacklers (or their Hollywood stand-ins: Matthew Broderick, Michael Stuhlbarg) conspired to charm the doctors, outsmart the regulators, and poison the public.
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