The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

In this candid and frequently poignant book, Jamison (The Empathy Exams) discusses her addiction to alcohol. Her student years at Harvard, Yale, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop were marked with accomplishments but also with heavy bouts of drinking that culminated in her attending AA meetings. Jamison is frank in describing her alcohol dependence and her attempts to stay sober. While recounting her own struggles, she interweaves the addiction battles of famous people, citing correspondence and often unpublished manuscripts to reveal the torment and creativity alcohol produced in such writers as Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, and Jean Rhys. Jamison visits abandoned rehabilitation centers and a Narco farm to understand how addiction was addressed in the past. She also provides a history of AA and America's misguided war on addiction starting with the first drug czar, Harry Anslinger, whose treatment of addicts as criminals continues to influence government policy. Jamison feared that her quest for sobriety story would be too ordinary before realizing that it could still be useful to others. This brilliant work is the product of that realization.