
In Pain
A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $24.29
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Travis Rieder
-
By:
-
Travis Rieder
About this listen
A bioethicist’s eloquent and riveting memoir of opioid dependence and withdrawal - a harrowing personal reckoning and clarion call for change not only for government but medicine itself, revealing the lack of crucial resources and structures to handle this insidious nationwide epidemic.
Travis Rieder’s terrifying journey down the rabbit hole of opioid dependence began with a motorcycle accident in 2015. Enduring half a dozen surgeries, the drugs he received were both miraculous and essential to his recovery. But his most profound suffering came several months later when he went into acute opioid withdrawal while following his physician’s orders. Over the course of four excruciating weeks, Rieder learned what it means to be “dope sick” - the physical and mental agony caused by opioid dependence. Clueless how to manage his opioid taper, Travis’ doctors suggested he go back on the drugs and try again later. Yet returning to pills out of fear of withdrawal is one route to full-blown addiction. Instead, Rieder continued the painful process of weaning himself.
Rieder’s experience exposes a dark secret of American pain management: a healthcare system so conflicted about opioids, and so inept at managing them, that the crisis currently facing us is both unsurprising and inevitable. As he recounts his story, Rieder provides a fascinating look at the history of these drugs first invented in the 1800s, changing attitudes about pain management over the following decades, and the implementation of the pain scale at the beginning of the 21st century. He explores both the science of addiction and the systemic and cultural barriers we must overcome if we are to address the problem effectively in the contemporary American healthcare system. In Pain is not only a gripping personal account of dependence, but a groundbreaking exploration of the intractable causes of America’s opioid problem and their implications for resolving the crisis. Rieder makes clear that the opioid crisis exists against a backdrop of real, debilitating pain - and that anyone can fall victim to this epidemic.
©2019 Travis Rieder (P)2019 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
Raising Lazarus
- Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her gripping, necessary, and deeply humane follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Dopesick, journalist Beth Macy brings us to the next frontier of the opioid crisis, telling the story of the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose in communities that are too often left to fend for themselves, and of the activists and relatives of the dead who are still struggling for accountability in America’s courts. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is—not where we think it should be or wish it was.
-
-
Uncomfortable Truth—the best kind!
- By Anna on 09-01-22
By: Beth Macy
-
Stash
- My Life in Hiding
- By: Laura Cathcart Robbins
- Narrated by: Laura Cathcart Robbins
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take.
-
-
Best Mom/wife alcoholism memoir I’ve read
- By Allison M. Billet on 04-06-23
-
The Least of Us
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Dreamland, a searing follow-up that explores the terrifying next stages of the opioid epidemic and the quiet yet ardent stories of community repair.
-
-
Top tier journalism and 100% honest
- By Anonymous User on 11-24-21
By: Sam Quinones
-
American Overdose
- The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Chris McGreal
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
-
-
An important read
- By Macmom4 on 02-18-19
By: Chris McGreal
-
Strung Out
- One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me
- By: Erin Khar
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.
-
-
Surface material
- By blythe mayfield on 03-06-20
By: Erin Khar
-
The Fifth Vital
- By: Mike Majlak, Riley J. Ford
- Narrated by: Mike Majlak
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Majlak was a 17-year-old from a loving middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting Oxycontin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends.
-
-
Book is straight fire
- By Amazon Customer on 03-04-21
By: Mike Majlak, and others
-
Raising Lazarus
- Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis
- By: Beth Macy
- Narrated by: Beth Macy
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her gripping, necessary, and deeply humane follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Dopesick, journalist Beth Macy brings us to the next frontier of the opioid crisis, telling the story of the everyday heroes fighting to stem the tide of drug overdose in communities that are too often left to fend for themselves, and of the activists and relatives of the dead who are still struggling for accountability in America’s courts. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is—not where we think it should be or wish it was.
-
-
Uncomfortable Truth—the best kind!
- By Anna on 09-01-22
By: Beth Macy
-
Stash
- My Life in Hiding
- By: Laura Cathcart Robbins
- Narrated by: Laura Cathcart Robbins
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take.
-
-
Best Mom/wife alcoholism memoir I’ve read
- By Allison M. Billet on 04-06-23
-
The Least of Us
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Dreamland, a searing follow-up that explores the terrifying next stages of the opioid epidemic and the quiet yet ardent stories of community repair.
-
-
Top tier journalism and 100% honest
- By Anonymous User on 11-24-21
By: Sam Quinones
-
American Overdose
- The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts
- By: Chris McGreal
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers. Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
-
-
An important read
- By Macmom4 on 02-18-19
By: Chris McGreal
-
Strung Out
- One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me
- By: Erin Khar
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.
-
-
Surface material
- By blythe mayfield on 03-06-20
By: Erin Khar
-
The Fifth Vital
- By: Mike Majlak, Riley J. Ford
- Narrated by: Mike Majlak
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Majlak was a 17-year-old from a loving middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting Oxycontin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends.
-
-
Book is straight fire
- By Amazon Customer on 03-04-21
By: Mike Majlak, and others
-
Never Enough
- The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction
- By: Judith Grisel
- Narrated by: Judith Grisel
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a renowned behavioral neuroscientist and recovering addict, a rare pause-resisting work of science that draws on personal insights to reveal how drugs work, the dangerous hold they can take on the brain, and the surprising way to combat today's epidemic of addiction. Judith Grisel was a daily drug user and college dropout when she began to consider that her addiction might have a cure, one that she herself could perhaps discover by studying the brain. Now, after 25 years as a neuroscientist, she shares what she and other scientists have learned about addiction.
-
-
The author ruined her own book with her narration
- By Milan on 05-03-19
By: Judith Grisel
-
High Achiever
- The Incredible True Story of One Addict's Double Life
- By: Tiffany Jenkins
- Narrated by: Tiffany Jenkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease - whether it’s a loved one or themselves.
-
-
I Get it, You Were an Addict
- By Jim Thompson on 10-16-19
By: Tiffany Jenkins
-
That's What Junkies Do
- By: Thomas Figlioli
- Narrated by: Shanon Weaver
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
That's What Junkies Do is a brutally honest, often dark journey of one man's struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. The story starts innocently enough in 1980's Brooklyn, NY, with a young boy, Thomas Figlioli, making a bad choice so he could gain the respect of a group of kids he looked up to and admired. Alcohol gives him the courage to be the person he always wanted to be. His fear and insecurity leaves and his lifelong struggle begins. When thoughts of ending it all become a better choice than living how he is, Thomas finally asks for help.
-
-
The honesty and story gripped me right from the beginning and never let go.
- By JOHN GERMIN on 09-08-21
By: Thomas Figlioli
-
Smacked
- A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy
- By: Eilene Zimmerman
- Narrated by: Eilene Zimmerman
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Something was wrong with Peter. Eilene Zimmerman noticed that her ex-husband looked thin, seemed distracted, and was frequently absent from activities with their children. Yet in many ways, Peter seemed to have it all. So begins Smacked, a brilliant and moving memoir of Eilene’s shocking discovery, one that sets her on a journey to find out how a man she knew for nearly 30 years became a drug addict, hiding it so well that neither she nor anyone else in his life suspected what was happening.
-
-
Fantastic and captivating.
- By Julie Vandenheuvel on 03-12-20
By: Eilene Zimmerman
-
Canary in the Coal Mine
- A Forgotten Rural Community, a Hidden Epidemic, and a Lone Doctor Battling for the Life, Health, and Soul of the People
- By: Dr. William Cooke, Laura Ungar - contributor
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Dr. Will Cooke, an idealistic young physician just out of medical training, set up practice in the small rural community of Austin, Indiana, he had no idea that much of the town was being torn apart by poverty, addiction, and life-threatening illnesses. But he soon found himself at the crossroads of two unprecedented health-care disasters: a national opioid epidemic and the worst drug-fueled HIV outbreak ever seen in rural America. Confronted with Austin’s hidden secrets, Dr. Cooke decided he had to do something about them.
-
-
My home town is the subject of this book!
- By C Pru on 07-01-21
By: Dr. William Cooke, and others
-
The Body Keeps the Score
- Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
- By: Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent more than three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.
-
-
Overall Worthwhile, Lingers Too Long in the Why
- By LittleBeadsOfMercury on 04-07-21
-
Dreamland
- The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
- By: Sam Quinones
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital centre of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America—addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.
-
-
Excellent
- By Joe on 08-01-22
By: Sam Quinones
-
Being Mortal
- Medicine and What Matters in the End
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
-
-
A Walk through the Valley of the Shadow
- By George on 11-02-14
By: Atul Gawande
-
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
- Close Encounters with Addiction
- By: Gabor Maté MD
- Narrated by: Daniel Maté
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this timely and profoundly original book, best-selling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them, and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours.
-
-
Gabor should have been the narrator
- By Stacey on 08-16-19
By: Gabor Maté MD
-
My Fair Junkie
- A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean
- By: Amy Dresner
- Narrated by: Amy Dresner
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Orange Is the New Black and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight, Amy Dresner's My Fair Junkie is an insightful, darkly funny, and shamelessly honest memoir of one woman's battle with all forms of addiction, hitting rock bottom, and forging a path to a life worth living.
-
-
if you don't read this I'll brandish a bread knife
- By Jackie Lange on 03-02-18
By: Amy Dresner
-
Hidden Valley Road
- Inside the Mind of an American Family
- By: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.
-
-
A story you've never heard before
- By Kelley Cox on 04-19-20
By: Robert Kolker
-
Pain Killer
- An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic
- By: Barry Meier
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between 1999 and 2017, an estimated 250,000 Americans died from overdoses involving prescription painkillers, a plague ignited by Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin. Families, working class and wealthy, have been torn apart, businesses destroyed, and public officials pushed to the brink. Meanwhile, the drugmaker’s owners, Raymond and Mortimer Sackler, whose names adorn museums worldwide, made enormous fortunes from the commercial success of OxyContin.
-
-
Infuriating and Compelling
- By TiffanyD on 12-24-18
By: Barry Meier
Hits close to home
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book should be read by all—especially all members of the healthcare profession, politicians, members of Congress, senators, and even patients.
I love the fact that the author presents some reasonable solutions.
Excellent Book to be read by Health Care Professionals, Politicians, and Patients
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent treatment of a challenging issue
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Putting a human face on a national problem
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An essential read in a time of crisis
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The reality of pain
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In Pain
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fascinating perspective
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is so powerful, however, not just because of the gripping scenes of his courage in the face of withdrawal (I honestly did not think I would make it thru Chapter 5!), and how his personal story illuminates the problem our country faces. It is powerful because he drives this story right into our living rooms with contemporary events—eg, the clean needles program in Ohio signed into law by a reluctant Gov Mike Pence as the lesser of two evils—addiction vs spread of HIV—but he uses his training as a bioethicist to provide a framework for moral decisions in this area where there are many strongly held, and often negative, beliefs.
Dr Rieder lays out the complexity of this problem empathetically but starkly and challenges us to act. Not with simple solutions, but with a simple change in mindset: this is a medical problem that requires expert medical treatment not shame AND with widespread acceptance of this attitude, then the political, legislative, and financial muscle to effect this treatment.
Finally, I can’t imagine how his wife held it together with a toddler and the agony in which she saw her husband. In that sense this is the most uplifting of love stories.
I ALWAYS LOVE AUDIOBOOKS READ BY THE AUTHORS. I feel like I am sitting across from them in an easy chair listening to their animated retelling of their story.
A great read!
Covers all bases; hits it out of the park
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
BEWILDERING AT BEST
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.