First published 2014
Allison Weiss sits in her pediatrician's office and opens a magazine to an addiction quiz. The questions make her wonder about her own pill use. She takes Percocet to unwind after long days and pops Vicodin after exercise classes or fights with her distant husband. The pills help her cope with her father's advancing Alzheimer's and her mother's struggle to care for him. They make her daughter's behavioral problems feel manageable. Allison tells herself the medication simply gets her through each day in her picture perfect suburban life. But the habit grows more expensive and harder to conceal from her family. She begins to realize that her increasing dependence on prescription drugs may have become her most serious problem. This story follows one woman's descent into addiction and her fight to recover control of her life.
Genres: fiction, addiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: addiction, mental-health, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Suburban
Period: Contemporary
384 pages · Hardcover · Atria Books
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, mental-illness