Book signing - 6:15 pm
Talk Begins at 6:45 pm

When Rutgers sociology professor Patricia Roos lost her 25-year-old son Alex to a heroin overdose, she began a journey to understand what happened to her family. But she also examined our broken policy approaches to addiction.

In this moving and thought-provoking talk, she draws on her memoir, Surviving Alex: A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction. Roos explores the deeper systemic forces—stigma, inequality, and failed public policy—that shape the overdose crisis. In the past year drug overdoses claimed the lives of more than 80,000 Americans. More broadly, 27 million Americans currently suffer from drug use disorder, and another 29 million from alcohol use disorder.

Weaving together personal experience and sociological insight, she offers a powerful call for compassion, community, and reform to address the addiction crisis. (patroos.com) The talk will be followed by DC. Dept. of Behavioral Health staff on overdose prevention. Free Naloxone available.