At age six, Jennifer Storm was stealing sips of her mother's cocktails. By age 13, she was binge drinking and well on her way to regular cocaine and LSD use. Her young life was awash in alcohol, drugs, and the trauma of rape. She anesthetized herself to many of the harsh realities of her young life--including her own misunderstandings about her sexual orientation--, which made her even more vulnerable to victimization. Blackout Girl is Storm's tender and gritty memoir, revealing the depths of her addiction and her eventual path to a life of accomplishment and joy.

    The inspiring story of a true NZ hero who overcame childhood neglect to become a successful scientist and businessman, and who has saved millions of lives in the third world.

    Carder Stout delivers a page-turning memoir about his fall from grace into the gritty underbelly of crack addiction, running drugs for the Shoreline Crips, surviving homelessness, escaping a murder plot, and finding redemption in the most unlikely of places.Dr. Carder Stout’s clientele includes Oscar-, Golden Globe-, Emmy-, Tony- and Grammy-winners, bestselling authors, and billionaires. He may not be able to share their dark secrets, but for the first time, everyone will know his.  At the age of thirty-four, Carder would have gladly pawned the silver spoon he was born choking on for a rock of crack. His downfall was as swift as his privilege was vast…or had he been falling all along? Raised in a Georgetown mansion and educated at exclusive institutions, Carder ran with a crowd of movers, shakers, and future Oscar-winners in New York City. But words like “promise” and “potential” are meaningless in the face of serious addiction. Lost years and a stint in rehab later, when Carder was a dirty, broke, soon-to-be-homeless crackhead wandering the streets of Venice, California. His lucky break came thanks to his old Ford Taurus: he lands a job of driving for a philosophical drug czar with whom he finds friendship and self-worth as he helps deliver quality product to LA’s drug enthusiasts, from trust-fund kids, gang affiliates, trophy wives, hip-hop producers, and Russian pimps. But even his loyalty and protection can’t save Carder from the peril of the streets--or the eventual contract on his life.  From a youth of affluence to the hit the Shoreline Crips put on his life, Carder delves deep into life on the streets. Lost in Ghost Town is a riveting, raw, and heartfelt look at the power of addiction, the beauty of redemption, and finding truth somewhere in between.

    Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these writers were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast. Often they did their drinking together—Hemingway and Fitzgerald ricocheting through the cafés of 1920s Paris; Carver and Cheever speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973.Olivia Laing grew up in an alcoholic family herself. One spring, wanting to make sense of this ferocious, entangling disease, she took a journey across America that plunged her into the heart of these overlapping lives. As she travels from Cheever's New York to Williams' New Orleans, from Hemingway's Key West to Carver's Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery. Beautiful, captivating and original, The Trip to Echo Spring strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

    He was told—like his entire generation—that his problem was caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate this question—and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong. Across the world, Hari discovered social scientists who were uncovering the real causes—and they are mostly not in our brains, but in the way we live today. Hari’s journey took him from the people living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin—all showing in vivid and dramatic detail these new insights. They lead to solutions radically different from the ones we have been offered up until now.Just as Chasing the Scream transformed the global debate about addiction, with over twenty million views for his TED talk and the animation based on it, Lost Connections will lead us to a very different debate about depression and anxiety—one that shows how, together, we can end this epidemic.

    The author, Kathryn Hansen, candidly shares her experience as a bulimic and her alternative approach to recovery. Brain over Binge is different than other eating disorder books which typically present binge eating and purging as symptoms of complex emotional and psychological problems. Kathryn disputes this mainstream idea and explains why traditional eating disorder therapy failed her and fails many. She explains how she came to understand her bulimia in a new way – as a function of her brain, and how she used the power of her brain to recover – quickly and permanently. Kathryn also sheds new light on eating disorder topics such as low self-esteem, poor body image, and dieting. Brain over Binge is a brave book that will help many by delivering an informed and inspiring message of free will, self-reliance, and self-control.

    Tackling subjects like addiction, fertility, feminism and sexual violence, and where these subjects intersect with legislation, these beautifully written essays are at once fascinating and funny, intimate and searingly honest. Honest, raw, brave and new, Notes to Self breaks new ground in the field of personal essays.

    For him, comedy was not a routine; it was a way of life. He could not enter a room unnoticed or let a conversation go without making someone laugh. Fans knew Chris as Saturday Night Live’s sweaty, swaggering, motivational speaker; as the irresistible Chippendales stripper; and as Tommy Callahan, the underdog hero of Tommy Boy. His family knew him as sensitive and passionate, deeply religious, and devoted to bringing laughter into others’ lives. But Chris did not know moderation, either in his boundless generosity toward friends or in the reckless abandon of his drug and alcohol abuse. For ten years, Chris cycled in and out of rehabilitation centers, constantly fighting his insecurities and his fears. Despite three hard-fought years of sobriety, addiction would ultimately take his life at the tragically young age of thirty-three. Fame on SNL and three straight number-one box office hits gave way to a string of embarrassing public appearances, followed by a fatal overdose in December 1997. Here is Chris Farley as remembered by his family, friends, and colleagues—the true story of a man who lived to make us laugh and died as a result. The Chris Farley Show is an evocative and harrowing portrait of a family trapped by addiction, a father forced to bury a son, and a gifted and kindhearted man ultimately torn apart by the demons inside him.

    But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad.Through the eyes of one broken family--two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough, Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.

    Indian Ernie, as he came to be known on the streets, here details an era of challenge, prejudice, and also tremendous change in urban policing. Drawing from his childhood, army career, and service as a veteran patrol officer, Louttit shares stories of criminals and victims, the night shift, avoiding politics, but most of all, the realities of the marginalized and disenfranchised.Louttit spent his entire career (including as a Sergeant) patrolling the streets of Saskatoon's west side, an area until recently beset by poverty, and terrible social conditions. Here, he struggled to bring justice to communities where the lines between criminal and victim often blurred. Though Louttit's story is characterized by conflict, danger, and violence, he argues that empathy and love for the community you serve are the greatest tools in any officer's hands, especially when policing society's less fortunate.While his story is based on his experiences in Saskatoon, it is equally applicable to the challenges faced in any community where marginalized people live. It is an exciting, passionate, easy to read, and highly accessible story aimed at a broad audience.

    A brilliant urban comic/tragedy that weaves satire, sarcasm and social commentary into a tightly wound anti-drug novel with an unforgettable climax.

    She was shocked when they were suspended from school for smoking cannabis; but this was just the start of a terrible, unimaginable journey - culminating in the knock on the door in the early hours by the police. They gave her the devastating news that her son Nick had killed himself in despair at his heroin addiction.Since his death, Elizabeth has campaigned tirelessly to make parents aware of the pain and suffering caused to families by drug addiction; and her surviving twin, Simon, now drug-free, has contributed his own thoughts to this inspiring and moving book.

    You want to know what it takes to rise above your circumstances when all the cards are stacked against you? Ask me.Comedian Patricia Williams, who for years went by her street-name "Rabbit," was born and raised in Atlanta’s most troubled neighborhood at the height of the crack epidemic. One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons and petty crimes. At seven Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13 she was pregnant. By 15 Pat was a mother of two. Alone at 16, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive. Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor that offers a rare glimpse into the harrowing reality of life on America’s margins, resilience, determination, and the transformative power of love.