Gave up 60 pages in. ( )

At the beginning of this book, I found it very difficult to have sympathy for Leslie Jamison. Her acknowledgement of her privileged position (Harvard, Iowa Writers Workshop, Yale PhD, loving parents, traveling abroad) seemed pro forma, and her desire to see herself as unique seemed stronger than her ability to place her alcoholism in context.

Luckily for both her and me, the book strengthened after the first couple of chapters and felt more natural and less self conscious. Jamison is an excellent writer (I loved The Empathy Exams), although the book is a little messy. It loops between a personal memoir, a study of alcoholism and abuse in literary and artistic figures, and a background to the social history of addiction in the US. The latter two subjects could be lengthy books on their own, so the focus is selective, but it's more effective than any amount of navelgazing at showing how on a personal level, addiction is both your own unique story and yet not essentially different from anyone else's. There's also a brief rundown on how enforcement efforts have always been disproportionately directed at black people (and to a lesser extent other people of color). Instead of just looking at famous drunk white men, she includes the story of Billie Holiday and other descriptions of heroin and crack use.

The recovery section is AA focused. Although the effectiveness of AA and 12 step programs has been recently scrutinized, the empirical value of AA isn't examined here. AA works for her, because AA provides a social network and structure. AA provides peer accountability, and reminds you again of her theme: your addiction is your own, but is uniquely banal. ( )

This was interesting enough, but the writer confuses her self-centered nature with the effect of drinking. It seemed too clever to be entirely honest, and I felt manipulated as a reader. To her credit there is a lot in here about authors and the nature of addiction which is interesting, but (as I heard describing something else): what's good isn't new, and what's new isn't good. ( )

Substantive, engrossing discussion of the mythologies around addiction. Follows the AA model of sharing stories, from individuals in AA meetings to the likes of Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, John Berryman, etc. ( )

One of the best books I've ever read about addiction, tying together the author's own story and that of addiction literature, about how much of recovery is telling your story and the privilege associated with having room to tell it. Belongs next to any great alcoholism book you can name. ( )