Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Recovering (Intoxication and its Aftermath)
By: Leslie Jamison
Narrated by: Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison (American Author, Harvard graduate, Professor of non-fiction writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.)
Leslie Jamison’s memoir is a personal and intimate account of her struggle with addiction and recovery. Jamison recalls her life in an upper middle-class family, interrupted by her parent’s divorce when she is eleven years old. Jamison chooses or is compelled to become an addict. A listener will use the experience of their own lives to argue whether addiction is a choice or environmental predilection.
To some, the course of one’s life is a matter of choice. Others believe life is ordained by a supreme being or fate, something beyond one’s control.
Still others believe life is just a matter of luck and circumstance. The examples of Jamison’s life prove nothing but tell the truth of her own addiction. If one is an addict in recovery, Jamison’s story may give one hope. On the other hand, her life is not your life, her education and intelligence are not yours, nor are her financial circumstances and environment. What one will get out of “The Recovering” is a jarringly truthful perception of Jamison’s experience of the world.
What Jamison shows is addiction is an equal opportunity victimizer, wherever it comes from and whatever its cause.
Jamison refers to the addiction of Amy Winehouse whose song alludes to addiction by saying “No, No, Know” that capsulizes what addiction meant to Winehouse. Jamison reveals what addiction and “Recovering” means to her after years of “…Recovering”.
Amy Winehouse (Famous English singer and songwriter, 1983-2011, died at age 27 from alcohol poisoning.)
Jamison explains addiction is numbing. When one becomes an addict, one is always recovering. Jamison reveals sexual relationships in her years as an alcoholic are sometimes good and desired, sometimes bad and endured. The bad and endured times are an implied condition of her drunkenness. Addiction is lonely. Addiction liberates. Addiction infects. Addiction kills. Addiction is a subject for a writer to write about.
The last chapters of Jamison book are about “The Recovering”. It begins with the chapter titled “Shame”.
Jamison explains working at a bakery in Iowa is an important part of her recovery because of its routine. At that time, Jamison notes her relationship with Dave, a man who becomes an essential partner in her life. These are shown as two fundamental reasons for her drive to become sober.
Dave has his own strengths and weaknesses like any person who chooses to commit themselves to a relationship. Jamison shows her insecurity by secretly peeking at his cell phone to find he is flirting with another woman. The flirtation implies infidelity, which is possible, even in committed relationships. Dave resents the implication, but no person is likely to deny their sexuality. Despite his denial of denial, Dave sticks with her through her beginning struggle for sobriety. A reader/listener realizes how important that personal support is to an addict’s recovery.
“The Recovery” becomes tedious in its remaining chapters for those who have not experienced addiction. However, Jamison’s memoir is a well-reasoned and detailed explanation of why punishment as treatment for addiction is a waste of time and money. Only personal relationships, social, and medical help for the addicted offer a chance for addicts to recover.
Jamison’s book is a condemnation of the “War on Drugs”.
Addiction is a terrifying and destructive disease that requires an addicted person’s self-understanding and the public’s support to break its cycle of destruction. Jamison explains recovery begins with wanting to break addiction’s cycle, but implies the addicted will only succeed with help and commitment of others. In Jamison’s case it is with the help of her then partner, Alcoholics Anonymous, and her commitment to be sober.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 