In 2015, Patricia Roos\'s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose.
And as she explores how a punitive system failed her son, she calls for a community of action that would improve care for substance users and reduce addiction, realigning public health policy to address the overdose crisis..
Drawing from interviews with Alex\'s friends, family members, therapists, teachers, and police officers--as well as files from his stays in hospitals, rehab facilities, and jails--Roos paints a compelling portrait of a young man whose life veered between happiness, anxiety, success, and despair.
Weaving together a personal narrative and a sociological perspective, S urviving Alex movingly describes how even children from good families fall prey to addiction, and recounts the hellish toll it takes on families.
Surviving Alex tells her moving story--and outlines the possibilities of a more compassionate and effective approach to Addiction treatment.
Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death.
In 2015, Patricia Roos\'s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose
