The Recovering Intoxication & It’s Aftermath Addiction Recovery NWT

NWT Author of New York Times bestselling The Empathy Exams. Blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism & reportage. The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head. The story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own & others' -- & examines what we want these stories to do & what happens when they fail us. She offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement & the bearing that race & class have on our understanding of who is criminal & who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary & artistic geniuses whose lives & works were shaped by alcoholism & substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson& David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. The Recovering becomes about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all "broken spigots of need." The loneliness & craving for love that devours us & shapes who we are. With enormous empathy & wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction & recovery in America writ large, a definitive & revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.