by Cat Marnell
First published 2017
Cat Marnell opens her memoir at twenty-six, working as an associate beauty editor at Lucky magazine while hiding a devastating secret. Behind her glamorous fashion world facade, she battles prescription drug addiction, manipulating Upper East Side psychiatrists to feed her pill dependency. Her story begins at an elite New England prep school with her first Ritalin prescription for Attention Deficit Disorder. The narrative follows her amphetamine-fueled career climb through major publications including NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. Marnell details her doctor shopping schemes, her bulimia that costs hundreds weekly on binge foods, and her insomniac nights spent taking anything to achieve sleep. She exposes the constant battle between professional ambition and destructive addiction as her disease systematically threatens everything she worked to build. The memoir moves between the prestigious Condé Nast offices and grimy downtown nightclubs, from psychiatric appointments to mental hospital stays, revealing the chaotic reality of a young woman unable to refuse drugs or self-destructive impulses.
Genres: addiction, autobiography, contemporary, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Conde Nast, Lucky Magazine, New England, New York
Period: 21st Century
384 pages · ebook · Simon Schuster
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, mental-illness