Reviews

Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict by Joshua Lyon

xylem's review against another edition

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4.0

Another memoir about harsh reality! Woot! Pill Head is very insightful, very objective, and a very interesting account of Lyon's pain killer addicted life. Pill Head adds more on that with other points of addicted teens/adults and builds from everypoint - to getting pills, and to groups on awareness. The story he tells is straightforward and depicts his troubled adolescence/mostly adulthood with his drug usage. It's not just about painkillers - it's a very harsh society depicted with controversial issues from HIV to homosexuality.

mick's review against another edition

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2.0

Pill Head wasn't as great of a book as I thought it was going to be. It was less a memoir of the author than a journalistic approach similar to the way he might have approached writing an article for Jane magazine. "Ok, I'm the author, and I had this experience. Also, these folks over here, let's write about them for a while, they had this other experience. Now what about these other guys? Them too!" It really was teetering between a memoir and an anthropological study... It really could have been turned into a more factual book, or it could have been centered more about the author and his experiences. Either way, I was a bit bored and have definitely read better memoirs about addiction. I just thought this one would be interesting since it was about pills instead of the usual suspects like cocaine or heroin, that's all.

dommdy's review against another edition

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2.0

Basically a drugalog. I was more interested in the recovery than the blow by blow of addiction. makes me wonder if he is really in recovery

aritrow's review against another edition

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2.0

Eh, just okay imo. Interested read as a biography and then all the facts and other perspectives got in the way..

thelawless's review

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informative medium-paced

3.0

stephaknee's review against another edition

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3.0

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book does seem a little disjointed. The author jumps around between personal stories, stories of friends and factual information regarding prescription drug use, abuse and distribution. Still, I'm a sucker for addiction memoirs and this one fit the bill. It also helped shed some light on why it is so difficult for me to obtain a legit prescription for pain killers (I suffer from severe migraines). All in all an interesting and enlightening read.
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