When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that overdose deaths had quadrupled in ten years, hitting a record high of 90,000 in 2020, opioid researchers around the country expressed shock with terms such as “huge” and “unprecedented.” They might have reserved a few adjectives since overdose deaths grew to 100,000 in 2021 and 110,000 in 2022. Each year there are now twice as many deaths from overdoses as from breast cancer or colon cancer and more deaths than from automobiles and firearms combined. In the past two decades, a million Americans have died of overdoses. In the next decade, at the current epidemic rate, a million more are projected to perish.

In a series of vividly personal vignettes, this book recounts the untold story of how CDC, the federal organization charged with controlling epidemics, implemented a misguided strategy that helped detonate an opioid overdose explosion. No other book has given a similar frontline, insider glimpse into the world’s premier public health agency.

To provide a unique, first-person perspective on the human consequences, the author chronicles his experiences as a physician prescribing opioids in Appalachia and treating gang members in prison attacks, as well as his own near-death ordeal as a patient receiving high-dose opioids for severe pain. Drawing on twenty-eight years as a CDC epidemic control specialist, Dr. LeBaron concludes that we do have the means to emerge from the cruel, lethal paradoxes of this self-inflicted opioid war—which is really a war upon ourselves.