Book Review: The Recovering
What I loved and loved (just slightly less) about The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, by Leslie Jamison.
I loved The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, by Leslie Jamison. Let’s start with the fact that her writing is sublime. Her ability to put words to the thoughts that have rattled around my head is an absolute gift. This was true of her ability to understand and communicate the many facets of addiction, but also the gnawing hunger that drives us on and on in various self-defeating pursuits. The book is both a memoir (my favorite part) and a chronicle of addiction through history and the experiences of various writers and artists, including Jack London, Billie Holiday, and William Burroughs. She highlights the historical experiences of addicts of color, whose consequences from addiction and options for recovery were far more bleak than those for Jamison herself, and discusses the social perceptions of addiction as, for various people and at various times, either a reprehensible, moral failing to be punished or a pitiable disease to be treated.
Here are a few brief passages from the book that illustrate her ability to capture this experience:
It was the worst humiliation: to be seen like this, not desired but desiring.
I didn’t just need Daniel to want me; I needed him to want everything with me. Anything less seemed like a rejection…Drinking with Daniel wasn’t just about delivering myself into the wild hands of his recklessness, it was about surviving his uncertainty.
It seemed shameful that my sadness had no extraordinary source - just the common loneliness of leaving home. So I found a more extreme costume for it: the not-eating. This was the thing that was wrong. But at heart, I sensed I was more like a binge eater than an anorexic - that my restrictive eating was just an elaborate front… I wanted to spend every single moment of my life eating everything.
Overall, this book was compulsively readable. I was rooting for her from the get go. And I felt her pain. On so many levels. With food, with men, and with alcohol. I also appreciated the historical analysis and the historical figures she brought to life as she explored the mixed messaging about addiction in art (necessary inspiration or hindrance?) Ultimately, however, these historical sidebars kept me from what I really wanted, which was the memoir. As the story went on, and I became more invested in her life, I found myself skimming over the parts that weren’t about Jamison. And that’s probably the one weakness of the book, though it kept with her theme of wanting to tell the story of addiction, its similarities and distinctions, its car crashes and redemptions, and to not focus exclusively on her story, which isn’t the full story of addiction.
All in all, I highly recommend this book, especially for sober and sober curious folks.
