It’s fun to read about ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse civilizations when you’re in sixth grade. It’s fun to pretend that their gods are real and that we, mere mortals, are subject to their divine whims. It’s fun to think that our lives are not our own and that we’re just pawns on their chessboards. What if, the Shusterman brothers ask, those gods were not the forehead-splitting or child-devouring or root-branching of the ancients? What if, instead of eternal beings above, there were tangible and ingestible substances down here? What if drugs are the modern guise of ancient gods? These brothers explore that question in ℞oxy, a book ostensibly for teens, but that has a wider appeal.
It’s a dark concept, to be sure. The most interesting part of the book is how the authors personify each drug by giving it a name and some basic traits that match its effects. So, Roxy, the title character, embodies oxycontin, and manifests herself when there are people in physical pain, such as one of the sibling protagonists, Isaac. He’s an athlete nursing an ankle injury and gets something to take as needed for pain, only instead of just pills, Roxy is a full-fledged person he can speak to and interact with. Well, because she’s a drug, it’s mostly manipulation. These are meant to be surrogate deities, remember? You’ve also got Addison, the embodiment of Adderall (not to be confused with his cousin, Rita, the embodiment of Ritalin!), who is trying to help Isaac’s older sister, Ivy, focus her life on school after a habit of underachieving and binge-drinking. Each of them has their flaws, as Isaac observes with the crass comment “Everybody’s got a turd somewhere on their lawn. So this is yours” (p. 67). Pearls of wisdom that only a white cishet teenage boy could dispense.
We know from the first chapter that one of these siblings will not survive, but are left guessing who it will be throughout the remaining pages. These stakes get higher when Roxy and Addison make bet about which one of them will succeed in bringing their charge to “The Party,” which is kind of like drug heaven, or pure addiction. There is constant discussion of who the “plus one” for each drug will be. At The Party, we meet many of Roxy and Addison’s acquaintances from years past. There’s the ever-reliable naturals Al, Mary Jane, and Nico (alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine) as well as newer arrivals, such as Dusty and Charlie (the coke brothers), their friend Crys (crystal meth), and even Phineas (morphine). Up above the party, past Hiro’s (heroin) VIP room and its towering ayahuasca vine, is yet another realm, where fabled names of ‘Lude and Darva hang out. These were once drugs that were ubiquitous, but have fallen out of favor. And, like Prometheus of Greek myth fame, are fated to have their livers eaten each night as they’re each held in place with the twin snakes of the caduceus rod.
If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed the wordplay involved in naming these characters. There are still more, but I will let you discover them on your own. Maybe you can tell by reading this far that I have zero experience with any of these substances. I didn’t know what Isaac meant when I read that ingesting Roxy made him feel “Like his soul is packed in Bubble Wrap and ready for delivery” (p. 89). I’ve never drank anything stronger than black coffee. I don’t smoke, and I’ve maybe had one contact high in my life. So, I think my lack of experience in these chemical realms is important to note because I might be making these substances sound a lot cooler than they actually are. I have no interest in any kind of recreational substance use. I’d prefer to avoid places that have “All the class of a landfill,” as Ivy describes the living arrangements of one of the most notorious suppliers in the book (p. 126). On the other hand, I have been speaking to my doctor recently about using medication to treat some of the symptoms that five years of therapy haven’t been able to help. So, I hope I don’t end up like the one sibling who takes it too far and never gets to leave The Party. Drugs terrify me, still. A family history of addiction will do that to you. And yet, it’s more than a little hypocritical that I keep medicinal solutions to mental health at an arm’s length when I use various capsules and sprays to keep my allergies at bay every morning. I already use glasses to help me see, so how is this kind of intervention any different? I would gladly accept a cast if I broke my leg, etc. It was a TikTok (of all things!) from a doctor who said something like “there’s no glory in suffering through something that’s preventable” that made me finally open my mind to the idea of getting something to fix my head. I’m not gonna lie—the fictional cautionary tales here give me the slightest bit of pause.
Although there are plenty of disturbing drug-related episodes throughout the text, the one paragraph that moved me especially deeply this week concerns Isaac and Ivy’s parents discussing their grandmother’s living situation. Their mom explains how the kids’ grandma can’t afford a personal caregiver and that neither parent can afford to stop working to provide that same level of care. In other words, putting grandma in a home is the most affordable choice, even if it’s the one no one wants (p. 136). This comment struck me strongly when I read it because it was this situation that Kamala Harris had made part of her campaign. She was going to let the Trump tax cuts expire and use the revenue generated from those taxes to give families with aging parents a chance to afford in-home health care. That vision is further from the near future and is now on a horizon so distant as to be invisible.
As readers, we each bring a different understanding of the world to the texts we read. Walter Kintsch argued that we combine that background information with the textbase to create a situation model of what the text means. What we know can change with time and different inquiries. You will probably not get the same lessons from this book that I did. It would be a bit frightening if we all thought the same, anyway. I include this disclaimer about the reading process because I can’t tell whether this book will be a series of triggering events as you page through its narrative. The writing is strong enough that I felt myself getting more and more drawn into the conflicts between the siblings and their drugs of choice. Calling the book addictive is insulting to those experiencing addiction and also inaccurate—I could put it down, even as much as I liked it. Still, a book is worthwhile to me if it makes me learn something about myself, if not the world, and ℞oxy is definitely a more knowledgeable other with much to teach.
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