“People always think recovery is either you’re completely abstinent or you’re in full chaotic use, and there is a world in between.” —Jess Tilley, president of the New England Users Union.
Media coverage has established a clear narrative of the overdose crisis: In the 1990s, pharmaceutical corporations flooded America with powerful narcotics while lying about their risk; many patients developed addictions to prescription opioids; then, as access was restricted, waves of people turned to the streets and began using heroin and, later, the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl.
But that’s not the whole story. It fails to acknowledge how the war on drugs has exacerbated the crisis and leaves out one crucial voice: that of drug users themselves.
Across the country, people who use drugs are organizing in response to a record number of overdose deaths. They are banding together to save lives and demanding equal rights. Set against the backdrop of the overdose crisis, Light Up the Night provides an intimate look at how users navigate the policies that criminalize them. It chronicles a rising movement that’s fighting to save lives, end stigma, and inspire commonsense policy reform.
Told through embedded reporting focused on two heroic activists, Jess Tilley in Massachusetts and Louise Vincent in North Carolina, this is the story of the courageous people stepping in where government has failed. They are standing on the front lines of an underground effort to help people with addictions use drugs safely, reduce harms, and live with dignity.
“A masterful, propulsive book about the overdose crisis, full of heart, humanity, and hope.” —Beth Macy, author, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America.
“There are two kinds of people in the Downtown Eastside: the ones that desperately want to leave and the ones who know they’re home.” —Melissa Eror, founding member of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.
Fighting for Space tells the story of a grassroots group of drug users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside who waged a political street fight for two decades to transform how the city treats its most marginalized citizens. The book follows the lives of two women—Liz Evans, who founded the Portland Hotel Society, and Ann Livingston, who co-founded the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users—and the extraordinary lengths they went to help their community weather a crisis.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, this group of residents from Canada’s poorest neighborhood organized themselves in response to a growing number of overdose deaths and demanded that people addicted to drugs be given the same rights as any other citizen.
But just as their battle came to an end, fentanyl arrived and opioid deaths across North America reached an all-time high…
“The story of the Downtown Eastside is one of the most inspiring, moving, and enraging stories of our time. This beautiful and haunting book finally does it justice.” —Johann Hari, author, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War On Drugs.
Travis Lupick is an author and award-winning journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Vice Magazine, among others.
He is the author of Light Up the Night: America’s Overdose Crisis and the Drug Users Fighting for Survival (the New Press, 2022), and Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018).
Lupick previously spent 10 years as a staff reporter for the Georgia Straight newspaper in Vancouver. For his reporting on Canada’s opioid crisis, Lupick received the Canadian Association of Journalists’ prestigious Don McGillivray award for best overall investigative report of 2016. For Fighting for Space, he received the 2018 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature and nominations for the 2018 B.C. Book Award and City of Vancouver Book Award.
He has also worked as a journalist in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Malawi, Nepal, Bhutan, Peru, and Honduras.
Twitter: @tlupick
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Email: travis.lupick[at]gmail[dot]com
Website: tlupick.com