Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dreamland, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain Management and the Normalization of Narcotics
The Drug Business
Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic
Community as a Remedy to Addiction
Summary
Analysis
The morphine molecule “possess[es] heaven and hell,” as it allows doctors to perform life-saving surgeries, but it also has the side effect of addiction. Morphine inspires a contemplation of whether humanity can “achieve happiness without pain.” In light of this, Quinones observes that “man’s decay has always begun as soon as he has it all[.]” He extends this paradox to encompass disturbing trends that emerged in the culture over the last decade of the 1900s, noting “a scary obesity emerging” when he returned to the States from Mexico: “Everything seemed obese and excessive. Massive Hummers and SUVs were cars on steroids.” In short, America was consumed by harmful excess.
Quinones sees humanity’s obsessive quest to “achieve happiness without pain” as a desire for an easy, effective way out of life’s troubles. He sees this reflected in America’s belief that it can combat pain and isolation with excess consumerism and accumulation of material goods. America’s belief that there could—and should—be an easy way to avoid the pains of life ultimately created a culture that was willing to accept and demand the prescription painkillers that fueled the opiate epidemic.
Themes
In researching Dreamland, Quinones tracks down chemist Andy Coop at his current position at the University of Maryland, and Coop explains to him how morphine works by activating the mu-opioid receptors in mammal brains, creating a pleasurable sensation. Unlike aspirin, which can only soothe a certain level of pain, morphine will dull more pain as more of the molecule is absorbed.
Morphine’s properties seem to parallel what Quinones sees as America’s growing obsession with excess: Americans believe that the more things they buy, the more hardships they can ignore, just as more morphine leads to more pain relief.
Themes
Because of these miraculous, pleasurable effects, the opium poppy (from which morphine is derived) has been extensively studied. Opium, in the form of a goo, is housed in a bulb that sits on the top of the plant’s stem. Humans have used opium to make drugs such as laudanum, codeine, thebaine, and hydrocodone, among others. Coop explains that morphine’s withdrawal effects are just as intense as its pleasurable outcomes: addicts in withdrawal are met with excruciating pain. Quinones writes that the drug is “the poster molecule for an age of excess. No amount of it was ever enough.”
The convenience of morphine as a solution to pain is outweighed by its addictive qualities and the resulting symptoms of withdrawal. Quinones argues that morphine is “the poster molecule for an age of excess,” because its highly addictive quality means that users must consume more and more of the drug as their tolerance quickly builds. Just as American culture was driven by selfish excessive consumerism in 1990s, the addictive quality of the morphine molecule drives its users to consume the drug in increasingly excessive amounts.
Themes
