Dreamland

Back in Washington, Jaymie Mai and Gary Franklin of the state’s L&I department continue to document the opiate epidemic. Since issuing their new guidelines in 2008, overdose deaths have decreased in Washington.

Quinones visits John Bonica’s Multidisciplinary Pain Center in Seattle where Dr. David Tauben took over as director in 2013. Tauben used to be a proponent of opiates, but later changed his mind as he saw their ineffectiveness. Quinones recalls Alex Cahana, whom Tauben replaced as director of the Pain Center. Cahana’s time working in the industry has made him consider pain in a philosophical light. He believes “stuff” to be the problem: America’s obsession with technology and easy solutions created a need for simple solutions and instant gratification.

In 2013, the “search for the Holy Grail” funded by John Rockefeller Jr. turns 75. Quinones goes to San Diego to attend the committee’s annual conference: he wants to know where the search stands. Today, the committee is known as the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, and there is more research emphasis extended to addiction.

At the conference, Quinones speaks with Martin Adler, a pharmacology professor at Temple University. Adler, like most of the committee, believes it’s unlikely that there will ever be a Holy Grail drug. Further, there is a place in life for pain: “There are people born without pain receptors,” he said. “[Living without pain] is a horrible thing. They die young because pain is the greatest signaling mechanism we have.” Quinones also consults Dr. Katz, the pain specialist who, years ago, had been confronted at a conference by a young woman for prescribing her brother pills that killed him. Katz now sees the past misconceptions about pain as willful ignorance: doctors believed pills were nonaddictive because they wanted a simple solution to pain.