First published 2009
Journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis chronicles the lives of eight Americans struggling with various addictions across nearly three years of immersive reporting. His subjects include a grandmother, college student, bodybuilder, and housewife who battle drug and alcohol dependency, compulsive eating, gambling, and sexual behaviors. Denizet-Lewis weaves their recovery and relapse stories with his own candid account of overcoming sexual addiction. He examines how American culture fuels addictive behaviors as people seek escape from present reality and pursue feeling better through destructive means. The book positions addiction as the nation's most significant public health crisis, one that drives crime, poverty, rising healthcare costs, and child abuse. Through these intimate portraits of Americans at different stages of their recovery journeys, the work reveals both the personal devastation of addiction and its broader social consequences.
Genres: addiction, american, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: intimate, personal-journey
Setting: America
Period: 21st-century
342 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: addiction, substance-abuse