A review by steve_sanders
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

4.0

When Jamison’s gaze is turned outward to the cultural history of addiction, Recovering is a stellar, engrossing read, less so when she shifts the focus to her own experience. She hits the frequent pitfall of addiction memoirs by attempting to convey the horrors of alcoholism by recounting all the times she got drunk with a hot guy in an exotic, international locale. The portrait of her relationship with Dave works better as a depiction of the havoc that addiction wreaks on all forms of intimacy, but even then Dave feels less like character and more like a projection of her own evolving insecurities.

I also wish Jamison hadn’t waited until the afterward to address the existence of addiction treatments outside the 12 Step model (Maia Szalavitz’s Unbroken Brain is a wonderful exploration of this).

Still, what works here works very well. Jamison prose and eye for detail are never less than first rate.