"Unbroken Brain": A New, Forward-Thinking Book on Addiction

(Note: This book review also appears on The Huffington Post Books site under the same title.)


As a recovery advocate and the father of someone in long-term recovery, I've read more books about addiction than I can count. When my son first started struggling with drugs, I made a vow to educate myself as much as I possibly could. Knowledge is power, and I wanted to know everything about addiction. I still do. So I read about it. A lot. And I can honestly say that Maia Szalavitz's Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction is one of the best books I've ever read on the subject.

Maia Szalavitz is a fabulous writer who has penned a wonderful, very forward-thinking book about addiction. She introduces us to some new theories about addiction, several of which may have people re-examining the way they've thought about one of the most prevalent and deadliest problems in America today.

Szalavitz sets out to show that addiction isn't a choice or moral failing. "But it's not a chronic, progressive brain disease like Alzheimer's, either," she notes. "Instead, addiction is a developmental disorder--a problem involving timing and learning, more similar to autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and dyslexia than it is to mumps or cancer." Yes, Szalavitz is blazing new trails here.

The author contends that "addiction doesn't just happen to people because they come across a particular chemical and begin taking it regularly. It is learned and has a history rooted in their individual, social, and cultural development." She adds that the addicted brain is not "broken," as many other researchers and writers have suggested. Instead, she says, the addicted brain has "simply undergone a different course of development....addiction is what you might call a wiring difference, not necessarily a destruction of tissue."

Looking at addiction as a learning disorder may seem strange to some, but Szalavitz states that doing so "allows us to answer many previously perplexing questions." And in Unbroken Brain, Szalavitz--who is 25+ years in recovery from cocaine and heroin addiction herself--tells us how learning is a part of every aspect of addiction, oftentimes drawing upon her personal experience to illustrate her points.

There are so many interesting and thought-provoking topics covered in this book. From the problems associated with waiting for someone to hit "rock bottom" to the myth of the addictive personality; and from the issues surrounding 12-step programs to why harm reduction isn't a bad thing. ("Harm reduction recognizes [the] social and learned components of addiction. It 'meets people where they're at,' and it teaches them how to improve their lives, whether or not they want to become abstinent." Amen to that.)

If you or someone you love has been touched by addiction, or if you're just interested in this fascinating subject, I cannot recommend Unbroken Brain highly enough. This book contains a wealth of information, but Maia Szalavitz presents it in an organized manner while writing in a clear and understandable voice. Trust me: You will not be bombarded with a bunch of scientific language that you don't understand. 

Szalavitz writes in the introduction, "Only by learning what addiction is--and is not--can we begin to find better ways of overcoming it. And only by understanding addicted people as individuals and treating them with compassion can we learn better and far more effective ways to reduce the harm associated with drugs." That is definitely the approach we should be taking with addiction. Hopefully, Maia Szalavitz's innovative new book will be the catalyst for some positive change.

If Someone You Love Is Struggling with Addiction, These Books Can Help

Greetings to all of my readers on what can only be described as an absolutely gorgeous late-summer day in suburban Detroit.

I wanted to bring to your attention a new blog I wrote for the Recovery.org website. It's called "6 Essential Books for Those with an Addicted Loved One." This is a topic I've wanted to cover for quite a while, so when the opportunity presented itself I jumped at the chance.

The six books I discuss in the blog are books that have literally changed--and even saved--my life. If you are the parent or loved one of someone struggling with addiction, I highly recommend that you check these books out. I can pretty much guarantee that you'll get something out of each and every one of them.

Here's a direct link to the blog: 

http://www.recovery.org/6-essential-books-for-those-with-an-addicted-loved-one/

Happy reading!

P.S. Are there other books you'd put on this list? If so, let me know if the comments below.

"Knowledge is love and light and vision." --Helen Keller

An Interview with "The Bitter Taste of Dying" Author Jason Smith (Plus a Book Giveaway!)

(Note: A shortened version of this blog post also appears on The Huffington Post's blog site as "An Interview with Jason Smith, Author of 'The Bitter Taste of Dying.'")

When I reviewed Jason Smith's addiction memoir, The Bitter Taste of Dying, I called it "a gripping, no-holds-barred memoir," "a riveting story of addiction and recovery," and "a story of self-discovery and hope, too." Smith's book is all of those things, and more. From the first page of the Prologue, I was hooked. Smith's brutal honesty and transparency allowed me to enter into his hellish world; a world where being high--whatever the cost--was all that mattered to him for 16 years.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Smith and, just like in his book, he did not mince words. Read the conversation below, and at the end of the interview find out how you can win a free copy of The Bitter Taste of Dying.


The title of your book, The Bitter Taste of Dying, comes from the taste you first encountered while trying to perform CPR on your Uncle Mark after he overdosed on heroin when you were 14. You later experienced that same taste after overdosing yourself. I take it that taste had quite an impact on you?

Yeah, it's not really something that can be untasted. Or unremembered, for that matter. Or Unlearned. The day I found my uncle dying was so chaotic on so many levels, both internally and externally. That taste attached itself to that memory, making everything one. My memory and that taste--it's all one blur. Same with my own overdose in France. Pure chaos. Looking back, there’s some really dark comedy woven in there somewhere, the image of this 6'-2" American stumbling through the streets of Nice, parents gripping their children nice and tight as I passed, on my way to collapsing on the patio of some romantic cafe. But at the time it was a chaotic scene. It really was the point at which everything came full circle. Both experiences--despite being in different countries, on different continents--unified by the taste of the body dying.

You describe so many lows in your book. Your mother telling you that you were "dead" to her, you sucking on Fentanyl patches that were supposed to be stuck on your arm, etc. Looking back on everything that happened to you, which one incident comes closest to being your definitive "rock bottom"?

I've come to my own personal conclusion that there are two types of bottoms: a physical one and a spiritual one. And when I say "spiritual," I mean spirit as in the Human Spirit, that thing inside of us that tells us to keep fighting when we're losing, that id, fight or flight spirit. I'd been to a lot of physical bottoms. Jail in Tijuana, living outside of a French train station. Those were by far the darkest physical places I went to. But the funny thing is, throughout both of those, I still had fight inside of me. Life. That same voice that told me I could keep using and just control it better was the same voice that kept me alive at times. But when I tried to end it all that night in my little bathroom after my Thanksgiving overdose, that voice was gone. It was dead. That voice that used to tell me to just keep pushing a little more, that I could get a handle on this situation, I could run from the courts, the judges, the police, the addiction--that voice was gone. And to me, that was the deepest bottom for me because it was as if my human spirit had simply vacated my body, leaving just a shell of a human being behind. It was dark. Really, really dark.

One of the most powerful lines in your book is: "It took me losing everything to appreciate anything." What role does gratitude play in your life now?

Gratitude is key because it allows me to truly appreciate things I would have taken for granted before. I cherish my time with my family, holding my kids, because I've had my child removed because I was incompetent--as both a parent and a human being--of raising him. That shit stings. That's a reality check if ever there was one. To lose that right, only to gain it back slowly, has made me truly grateful for the opportunity to be a parent. I didn't have that before. Before I was a self-entitled little child, the perpetual victim. I'm grateful that I don't live or feel like that anymore. I’m grateful for the type of shit that normal people don't even realize they have. I'm grateful to wake up without being dope sick. I'm grateful for having money in my bank, and it staying in the bank. I'm no longer putting my drug dealers' kids through college.

What is one the biggest struggles you face in your ongoing recovery, and how do you deal with it?

Writing can be tricky. Especially writing about addiction. I have to be 100% accountable for my past actions, my decisions, and have to deal with those consequences without blaming everybody around me. It wasn't the doctors that got me hooked, or the pharmacists, or the dealers, or the system. It was me. I could’ve walked away at any time, and I chose not to. That's how I have to view things for my own recovery, for my own sanity. As long as I'm accountable, then I can work on it. As long as it's your fault, I can’t do shit with it. I just can't. Having said that, as a writer, I have to step back from just my own experience and look at things from afar, at the big picture. And when I do that, I see a system that is totally and utterly fucked. Seriously. A system where pharmaceutical companies sponsor their own safety studies, lie to doctors about the dangers of certain drugs, admit to lying in court, pay a fine, and then go on with life while society is left picking up the pieces. It's crazy. I feel like I have an opportunity and a platform to talk about these things, but I have to do it in a way that isn't blaming them for my own situation. Sometimes those two things bleed dangerously close together. I have to always keep those two things separate, and that’s probably the most difficult thing for me at this point.

I know they were certainly tested over the years, but how are your relationships with your family members now?

Surprisingly well, actually. Time heals all wounds, which isn't something you want to hear when you're first getting clean. But it's true. As an addict, I was so used to instant gratification. When I was after a certain sensation, I got it immediately through some substance. So when I got clean, I wanted everybody just to forgive me. Just move on, like none of that shit just happened. But it doesn’t work that way. The first two Christmases after I got clean, my family was skeptical, all wondering "Is Jason going to make it? Is he going to get high?" Because that was my thing. Holidays, I'd just get tore up. There really is no way to make them stop fearing that other than getting a few Christmases under your belt clean. Let them see it. So far, by doing that, my family relationships have been mended. Even with my son's mom. Today she and I have a great relationship, she and my wife get along great, we're able to co-parent. But that took a few years, and still takes work. Unfortunately, the only thing that mends these relationships is time. There is no quick fix, at least not in my experience.

What aspect of your life are you most proud of today?

Being a father. I’m fairly involved in a 12-step program, and one of the running themes you see, regardless of your location, is the effect of dads not being around. It's sad, and it has profound effects on kids. I almost made my own son one of those statistics, a boy growing up without a dad. I’m so thankful that I got my shit together before he was old enough to know what was going on. Today I'm a father to him and his sister, and I love that. I love being a dad. I love letting the kids climb on me, teaching them to swim or ride a bike. All of it. I’m that guy. Dad bod and all. And I'm good with that.

What's one important truth you've learned through the recovery process?

There's a right way to live and a wrong way. And we always have the choice of which one we decide to go with.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger." How are you stronger because of your addiction?

I like what [Bob] Dylan said, when he sang "He not busy being born is busy dying." It's the same concept as Nietzsche, in a sense, but in reverse. I kind of look at my life today--and I try to do it daily, although I have a far from perfect track record--and ask whether I'm busy being born, or if I'm dying. For whatever reason, the simplicity of the two options resonates with me. And it works.

Based on your experiences, how do you think we could improve treatment for people suffering from substance abuse?

I think we're seeing the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to substance abuse in this country. The prescription drug epidemic changed the game. We have such a large segment of society addicted to prescription drugs, which is funneling a decent percentage of addicts into street drugs. We're giving children amphetamines for fuck's sake, and then we act like we're surprised when meth use explodes. We choose not to see the connection. We've gotten an entire generation hooked on opiates via doctors, and now we've decided to just cut them off, with treatment only available to those who can afford it. And we wonder why heroin has spiked the way it has. At some point, we're going to have to start answering some very uncomfortable questions in this country.

We’re something like 4% of the planet's population and we consume 90% of the planet's opiates. This is a uniquely American problem. I don't mean that America is the only country with drug problems. I'm saying our approach to living life. It's unique compared to any of the countries I've visited. At some point, Americans decided we didn't want to feel anything that was even slightly uncomfortable. We didn't want to feel pain or hurt or discomfort, on either a physical or emotional level.

Ironically, the most difficult time I ever had scoring prescription drugs was in Amsterdam. I went into the hospital at like 4:00 in the morning after a night of cold sweats and shaking from running through two month's worth of drugs in two weeks, and I waited to see a doctor. Pills and patches were my thing, and those were like the only two types of drugs you couldn't find on the streets of Amsterdam. So I lifted my shirt for the doctor, showed him my scars, and to my surprise he seemed unimpressed. I made up some shit about how it hurt when I lifted my arms over my head, and demonstrated the appropriate amount of faux pain--but this guy wasn't buying it. "It hurts when I do this," I told him. He just looked at me deadpan serious without even blinking. "Den don’t do dat." It was so simple, yet so foreign. The idea that discomfort could be lived with, that pain was a way of your body communicating with you. The concept that pain is sometimes a very necessary and beneficial part of life. Today in America I think we've lost touch with this.

I had a friend who broke up with his girlfriend and he was all bummed out and sad. His doctor put him on anti-depressants! Huh? You’re supposed to be sad. You just lost a partner with whom you'd built a life and now it's over. Be sad! It’s okay! Feel that shit. Feel it, own it, grow from it, and move on. You're supposed to be sad, that's part of the grieving process of any breakup. But today, it’s like, "Nah, just give me a pill to make it stop." And I think we do that in many areas of life. You have acute back pain? Maybe you need to change the way you sit, or stand, or walk. Numbing the pain doesn't really help the actual problem. You're treating symptoms, chasing your own tail. We've turned to pharmaceuticals to perform normal human functions. Pills to wake up, pills to sleep, pills to feel happy, pills to bring us down. And I think it’s this mentality, more than the actual drugs themselves, that we're going to have to face up to if we really want to start the process of treating drug addiction. We have to get out of that mindset that pain or discomfort is the enemy. Sometimes it’s a very necessary part of life.

I just realized I didn't come close to answering your actual question. Sorry. I rant sometimes.

As a father, what do you think are some of the best ways to educate kids about the dangers of drugs and addiction?

I think being completely honest about it. Don’t hide things or sugarcoat things, but don't go the "Scared Straight" route either. I'm completely aware that one day my kids will read my book, and that's a little strange. But I don't think I glorified my drug use. Nor did I demonize it. I just shared my experience. I think sharing our own experiences, in the tone of "Look, I’m not telling you not to do drugs. I'm telling you that if you do them, this might happen to you, because it's what happened to me." Enough with the "Just Say No" or DARE or "Scared Straight" or "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" approaches. None of them worked. We need something different. A whole new approach.

Knowing what you know today, if you could go back in time and give your teenage self some words of advice, what would you say?

Buckle up, man. It’s gonna be wild.

Hypothetical: The Bitter Taste of Dying ends up being made into a major motion picture. Who’s playing Jason Smith?

You realize there's no good answer to this question, right? If I answer it, I come off as a bit pompous and self-absorbed. If I don't answer it, I look like I'm trying to project faux modesty. I'll say this: You know who I really enjoy watching act now? Colin Farrell. I don't know much about his background, but he looks like he's seen some shit. Been through some shit. He has that presence about him. He's much better looking than me, but Hollywood's taken greater liberties than that before. I have a hunch that if he had to dig deep down to find the bottoms expressed in the book, he could do it. But it's just a hunch.

(You can find Jason Smith on the Web, on Twitter, and on Facebook.)

**************

Would you like to win a copy of The Bitter Taste of Dying? Here's your chance! Jason Smith has been kind enough to provide three copies of his book to give away to readers of this blog. To be eligible for the random drawing, just send me an email via the "Contact Form" that appears in the column on the right-hand side of the Web version of my blog (under the "Most Popular Posts" section). Just tell me that you want to be in the drawing. At 6:00 PM EDT on Saturday, August 1st, I will put the names of all the people who have entered into a hat and choose three winners at random. Note: I understand that some of you may be reluctant to share your name and email address with me, but it's the only way I can get in touch with you to let you know if you've won. I assure you that your information will be safe. (Of course, that's what Target told you, too, right?)

The Bitter Taste of Dying: A Memoir (Book Review)

(Note: This book review also appears on The Huffington Post Books site as "The Bitter Taste of Dying...and Addiction.")


At the age of 14, Jason Smith got his first taste of addiction. Literally. While his parents were away for the weekend, his uncle--a heroin addict who was living with Jason and his family--overdosed, and Jason had to perform CPR on him.

Performing CPR on a dying relative is bad enough, but Uncle Mark had "yellow shit coming out of his mouth and nose," and it soon coated the insides of Smith’s cheek and the back of his throat.

"That taste is unforgettable. Death tastes bitter, with a texture that falls somewhere between gritty and horrific, staining the memory for good. There’s no going back from it. Once there, it remains. Forever. All the therapy in the world can’t erase it." 

The bitter taste of dying indeed.

Three years later, Smith inadvertently stumbled upon the warm, comforting effects of drugs when he ended up in the hospital following a car accident that injured his back. One shot of Demerol and Smith was hooked.

"That first hit. There’s nothing like it in the natural world. I was in love. This feeling? I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to feel this way forever."

Welcome to the start of Jason Smith’s 16-year roller coaster ride of addiction. You'd better fasten your seatbelt and hold on tight.

The Bitter Taste of Dying is a gripping, no-holds-barred memoir of Smith’s experiences while in the throes of the beast known as addiction. He takes the reader along on his journeys to Europe, Mexico, and China, documenting his innermost feelings and the crazy, mixed-up thinking that goes hand-in-hand with drug dependency. Smith’s days and nights are filled with desperation and recklessness as he constantly chases a high while simultaneously running away from life.

Smith can’t live without drugs--Norco, Soma, Fentanyl, OxyContin, Xanax, etc.--but he can’t live with them, either. At least not in a manner that most human beings would want to live. His addiction is his constant companion through college, allowing him to shed the shyness and anxiety he felt while growing up. Drugs make his life easier, but at the same time they make his life a living hell.

Some of the situations Smith finds himself in are nothing short of terrifying. His time spent in a Tijuana prison--where he was beaten by guards and given drinking water from a janitor’s mop bucket--and his encounter with the Russian mob had me overflowing with empathy. The lengths Smith goes to in order to stay high are beyond what most people can even comprehend. He explains:

"It’s insanity. It’s insanity in its most obsessively-compulsive form. And maintaining an addiction for a single day requires more thought, planning, and on-your-feet problem solving than many ‘normal’ people use in a month….[Addicts] are problem solvers to our core."

Jason Smith is a guy who manipulated every person in his life and every system he encountered, all for the sake of getting high. A guy who chewed on Fentanyl patches that were meant to be stuck on his arm, because his method gave him a quicker, better high. A guy who at one point wanted to die but didn’t, because he couldn’t even commit suicide right. His life and addiction got so bad that he was devoid of any feelings.

"I didn’t feel anything. They use opiates to mask pain, but they’re not smart-bombs. They’re carpet-bombs and they annihilate anything in their path. They’re not able to pinpoint which pain to hit, and which to ignore. They just numb all of it, and when you do drugs as long as I did drugs, there comes a point where there’s nothing left. I couldn’t feel."

But 16 years after that fateful shot of Demerol, Smith finally got clean and sober. As he states so eloquently: “It took me losing everything to appreciate anything.”

Smith is an excellent storyteller and The Bitter Taste of Dying is an enthralling read. The end-of-chapter conversations with his sponsor, Bryon, are almost as compelling as the words that precede them. They add an insight that I haven’t found in most addiction-related memoirs, and show the evolution of Smith’s thought process as he moves from addiction to recovery.

Like so many people, Jason Smith turned to drugs when life and the feelings that go along with it got too hard to manage. Self-medication numbed him and allowed him to navigate what he previously thought was unnavigable. But he’ll be the first one to tell you that the magic didn’t last.

"My problem was the world and my inability to deal with it, the real-life shit that people go through every day. I found a secret off ramp on the crazy highway that is the world, and I took it, parked, and nodded out for 16 years. This worked for a while. Until, like always, it didn’t."

The Bitter Taste of Dying isn’t just a riveting story of addiction and recovery. It’s a story of self-discovery and hope, too. Make no mistake: Your life can be in complete ruins, but if you try hard enough you can rebuild it. The transformation of Jason Smith is proof of that. It may have taken him 16 years to find the light at the end of the tunnel, but the important thing is that he found it. “It’s taken its sweet ass time,” Smith writes. “But it’s happened.”

(Note: Excerpts from The Bitter Taste of Dying: A Memoir are Copyright © 2015 by Jason Smith. All rights reserved.)

"There Is Still Some Time": A Moving Essay from a Powerful Book

Yesterday I finished reading Jamie Tworkowski​'s book, If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For. For those of you who don't know, Jamie is the founder of To Write Love On Her Arms.​ (TWLOHA), an amazing organization whose mission is "presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide."

The book is a collection of some of Jamie's writings from between 2005 and 2014, many of which appear on the TWLOHA blog (a blog I was honored to write for in March of last year). Even though I had read many of these pieces before, I wanted to take them in all at once, in book form. And I'm so glad I did.

If You Feel Too Much is a book of hope, for sure. It should be required reading not only for people who may be struggling, but for everyone. The messages Tworkowski's essays convey are so important.  They tell us what is actually important in life, and how we should live and treat others. If more people thought and lived like Jamie Tworkowski, the world would be such a better place.

Of all the selections in this book, a couple of them really stand out to me. Of course, there's "To Write Love on Her Arms," which is the piece that gave birth to the entire TWLOHA movement back in 2006. Jamie wrote the story about then-19-year-old Renee Yohe, who was battling depression and addiction, frequently cut herself, and had attempted suicide. After Jamie posted the story on MySpace, it went viral. The rest, as they say, is history.

But of all the writings in If You Feel Too Much, I was most moved by "There Is Still Some Time." It's a short piece. Under 300 words. But those words are so impactful. Here is the essay in its entirety:

THERE IS STILL SOME TIME

If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here.

If you feel too much, don’t go.

If this world is too painful, stop and rest.

It’s okay to stop and rest.

If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break.

This life--it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win.

It’s okay to slow down.

You are here for more than grades, more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by.

This life is not about status or opinion or appearance.

You don’t have to fake it.

You do not have to fake it.

Other people feel this way too.

If your heart is broken, it’s okay to say your heart is broken.

If you feel stuck, it’s okay to say you feel stuck.

If you can’t let go, it’s okay to say you can’t let go.

You are not alone in these places.

Other people feel how you feel.

You are more than just your pain. You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence.

There is still some time to be surprised.

There is still some time to ask for help.

There is still some time to start again.

There is still some time for love to find you.

It’s not too late.

You’re not alone.

It’s okay--whatever you need and however long it takes--it’s okay.

It’s okay.

If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here.

If you feel too much, don’t go.

There is still some time.

(Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Tworkowski)

If you need some hope, pick up a copy of If You Feel Too Much and read it. And if you know someone who's going through a difficult time, no matter what the reason, maybe grab a copy for them and suggest that they read it. It is truly powerful.

Peace.

"You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people, and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things." --Jamie Tworkowski (from the essay "Happy Birthday")

Me and Jamie Tworkowski in Detroit in February of 2013.

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget (Book Review)

(Note: This blog post also appears on The Huffington Post Books site as "A Blackout Drinker Untangles the Mystery of Her Alcoholism.")

It's not too often that I feel compelled to tell you about a book via my blog. I think the only other books I've gushed about in my blog are David Sheff's Beautiful Boy, Kristen Johnston's GUTS, and the Center for Motivation and Change's Beyond Addiction. Just three books in more than six years of blogging.

Today I present number four.

-----------------------------------

When I was offered an advance reading copy of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola, I jumped at the chance.

As the father of a son in long-term recovery, I have read more than my fair share of books about addiction. In fact, the shelves in my bedroom are filled with addiction-related books. Books about the science of addiction. Twelve-step books. Guides to helping loved ones get clean and sober. Memoirs written by people in recovery. Etc. (If you're looking for a book on addiction, come on over. Chances are it's on my shelf and you're welcome to borrow it.)

Reading about people's struggles with--and triumphs over--addiction is especially fascinating to me. In the world of drug and alcohol abuse, everyone's story is so similar; but at the same time, everyone's story is so unique. When someone is brave enough to put their temporary train wreck of a life down on paper for the world to see, I can't help but get sucked in.

Sarah Hepola started drinking at an early age and fell in love with alcohol. This object of her affection eventually took control of her life, and for years she would drink to the point of blacking out. As you can probably guess from the title, that is the focus of much of this book. And Hepola holds nothing back.

"A blackout is the untangling of a mystery. It's detective work on your own life. A blackout is: What happened last night? Who are you, and why are we fucking?"

In reality, as Hepola explains, a blackout happens when your blood becomes so saturated with alcohol that the part of your brain responsible for long-term memory--the hippocampus--shuts down. Your short-term memory still works, but with the long-term variety on strike, remembering what you did when you were blackout drunk becomes impossible.

"It's such a savage thing to lose your memory, but the crazy thing is, it doesn't hurt one bit. A blackout doesn't sting, or stab, or leave a scar when it robs you. Close your eyes and open them again. That's what a blackout feels like."

To say Blackout is a brutally honest memoir would be a bit of an understatement. Kind of like saying Taylor Swift has sold a few records. In her book, Hepola details--to the best of her recollection--numerous incidents from her drinking past, several of which end with her lying next to a stranger in bed.

"As I lie in the crook of his arm, I have so many questions. But one is louder than the others. In literature, it's the question that launches grand journeys, because heroes are often dropped into deep, dark jungles and forced to machete their way out. But for the blackout drinker, it's the question that launches another shitty Saturday. How did I get here?"

Blackout is not all about Hepola sleeping with strangers, though. It's so much more than that. It's a poignant and revealing look into the mind of an alcoholic that lets the reader experience all of the raw emotions the author feels during her struggles. It's a tale of friendships and how they evolve--and devolve--over the years. Best of all, though, it's a success story.

The second part of the book is about Hepola's sobriety and the realizations that come along with it. "I finally understood alcohol was not a cure for pain; it was merely a postponement," she writes. It may have taken her years to get to that point, and there were many stops along the way; but recovery is a journey, and Hepola found her way.

The new sober life that she is living is challenging, but Hepola is happy. "Maybe at some advanced age, we get the gift of being happy where we are," she says. "Or maybe where I am right now got a whole lot easier to take."

Blackout is one of the best memoirs I've read. Like Kristen Johnston's GUTS: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster, it treats a sensitive subject with unbridled honesty and humor. Yes, Blackout is a touching and, at times, heartbreaking story. It will likely make you cry. But it will also make you laugh out loud. (One of the things you can do in a blackout? "You can sing the shit out of 'Little Red Corvette' on a karaoke stage.")

Sarah Hepola is the personal essays editor at Salon.com and has written for numerous other publications. But I have no doubt that Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget is her tour de force. At least for now.

Read this book. You won't be disappointed.

"The nights I can't remember are the nights I can never forget." --Sarah Hepola

(Note: Excerpts from Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget are Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Hepola. All rights reserved.)