Chasing the Dragon: How to Win the War on Drugs

The death of his son to an opiate overdose fuels a celebrated DEA agent’s quest to win the War on Drugs.

After a stellar twenty-three-year career with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Dan Addario’s own part fighting in the War on Drugs didn’t end. For good reason. Because in July of 1993, he lost his thirty-one-year-old son to a crisis that shows no signs of abating.

With Chasing the Dragon, Addario becomes the highest-ranking DEA agent ever to pen a book that includes the sum total of his experiences investigating narcotics hotbeds across the globe. These events include a stint as DEA’s regional director for the entire continent of South America, followed by Addario’s tenure running drug interdiction efforts in the infamous Golden Triangle.

After fighting on the front lines of the War on Drugs for his entire professional career, Addario believes he has found a formula for winning it. Remarkably, the fact that his prescription for success has been ignored by politicians and those charged with keeping the country safe has only further emboldened him to continue the fight.

Part historical memoir, part advocacy document, and part exposé, this book follows Addario as he climbs the professional ladder on the front lines of the War on Drugs. In the wake of his son’s tragic death he’s dedicated his life to the cause, redoubling his efforts and refusing to quit until the tide is turned against a national adversity that claims more than one hundred American lives every day.

Though the phrase commonly means “chasing the high” that heroin provides, Chasing the Dragon in Addario’s world is centered around hunting the monster that so defined, and ultimately upended, his own life. A monster no one else has ever been able to catch.

Until now.

As the highest-ranking field agent for the DEA under five presidents, Dan Addario fought against some of the world's biggest international drug rings, directing the war on drugs in South America and the Golden Triangle. Fueled by the death of his own son to an opiate overdose, he continues to fight that war today as a civilian.