The Causes and Consequences of Addiction

The theme of addiction is presented through Gifty's memories of her brother Nana's problem with opioids and ultimate death from an overdose, and through Gifty's work in neuroscience in the timeline in which she is 28 and conducting research at Stanford. Though fictional, the circumstances of Nana's story are true to life, in the sense that opioid addiction is a major crisis in the United States and many people who use these drugs begin doing so because a doctor prescribes them after an injury. In retrospect, Gifty finds it shocking that the disaster that befell her family began with something as ordinary as a twisted ankle at a basketball game, remarking, “It was a bad day, but the nature of its badness was utterly ordinary, just regular old shit luck” (140). Like many who become addicted, when Nana could no longer get pain...