*** How Not to Kill Yourself by Clancy Martin

How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind opens with a very real suicide attempt of the author–and it’s only one of several that will be related through the book–which is to say that this is not a light-hearted book. I found it fascinating as the author, a philosophy professor, explores his psyche, addictions, and stays in various psychiatric activities while analyzing various famous writers’ suicide attempts.

The book makes us see depressed, suicidal people as eminently rational and current treatments as mostly flawed. I found it strangely satisfying, although perhaps not what I would recommend to someone who’s actively depressed.

*** The Urge by Carl Erik Fisher

The Urge: Our History of Addiction is written by a psychiatrist who is an alcoholic himself and merges the personal and historical narratives skillfully. He highlights how little physicians know about addiction and treatment, let alone lawmakers or police forces. If you are worried that this will be a depressing topic, do give it a try. The overall focus is optimistic and solution-oriented.

*** Quitter by Erica Barnett

Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery delivers what the subtitle promises, with all the horrors of what full-blown addiction can bring (and, perhaps, a little less as the author is educated, holds on, mostly, to professional jobs, and has very supportive friends and family members). What stood out for me is the lack of appropriate detox facilities, especially for low-income addicts, and the surprising lack of evidence-based treatment.

** Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Shuggie Bain is growing up with his alcoholic mother, who wants to lead a refined life but has been betrayed by her husband and just cannot cope. As a child, and then a teenager, he tries to help her even as his older siblings leave one by one, his grandparents die, and he is mercilessly bullied by other children who resent his mother’s haughty way and cannot abide his gayness. It’s very dark, with only a few kind scenes, some with his older brother who does try to help, and some with a friend whose mother is also an alcoholic.

The overall dreariness and dramatic social plunge reminded me of the classic Germinal novel, which also takes place in a mining town. Quite an old-fashioned, over-the-top dramatic tone to convey the struggles of poverty.

** Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney

The author of Half Broke is a horse trainer who, by chance, starts working with prisoners (and their deranged horses) at an alternative camp in New Mexico. She soon finds that the prisoners need as much help as the horses and she starts spending large portions of her time there. It’s a raw and never sugar-coated story.I bet horse lovers would like it better than I did, but it’s a strong story.

*** The Substitution Order by Martin Clark

The Substitution Order is an enjoyable romp around the law and lawyers, centered around a hapless once-successful lawyer who did a little too much cocaine and finds himself working in a sub-par sandwich shop and threatened by big money. His vengeance is worthy of the early Grisham novels.

* Sugar Run by Mesha Paren

Sugar Run starts startlingly well, with a 35-year old being released from prison into the void, after a long sentence. Her family did not send her civilian clothes. She needs to get on the Greyhound bus and find her way, home but not just home. And then it starts to fall apart, slowly. Wouldn’t someone who had been away that long be startled at new reality? Apparently not, but it’s hard to believe. Would she conveniently meet just the woman she will fall in love with, with her problems and her children? Would the story of her crime conveniently unfold to show how she is doomed to repeat the past? And of course the heavy consumption of alcohol and drugs makes it all that much more boring. As one of the young characters says, “Sometimes, Mom needs help.” She does, buddy, she does, and no one is coming to help her, or you!

*** Down City by Leah Carroll

In Down City: A Daughter’s Story of Love, Memory, and Murder, the author explores the death of her mother, murdered by Mafia drug dealers and that of her father, a brilliant alcoholic who gave her much love but could not recover from a lost job. What could be a melodramatic quagmire is told soberly, through the eyes of a growing child who is neither an angel nor the mess one could imagine of someone growing in a dysfunctional family. It’s amazing how children can endure when there are a couple of truly helpful adults around them.

** Between Breaths by Elizabeth Vargas

Elizabeth Vargas was a very anxious child, forced to move repeatedly because of her father’s military career, bullied at school, and unnaturally worried about her dad. Since panic attacks are not helpful to TV journalists, she started to self-medicate with alcohol, eventually becoming a full-blown alcoholic. In Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction she recounts her struggles and that of her husband, reminding us that high-functioning alcoholics can hide their problems for a very long time, and that treatment is long, expensive, and rarely successful the first time around.

** Drug Dealer, MD by Anna Lemke

Written by a physician, Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop exposes how shoddy research, a laudable quest to treat pain better, and especially  features of the health care system that encourage physicians to acquiesce to patients’ requests and above all get them out of the door combined to overprescribe opioids and create millions of addicts. It’s a sobering story. Besides better education for physicians, it seems that relatively simple measures such as a universal prescription registry (alas implemented state by state) would help, but only a minority of physicians bother to check it…