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Overview
The Addict opens a window on the very private world of prescription drug addiction, revealing the harrowing story of a young woman whose life has been taken over by a need she can't extinguish.
Lucy's first appointment with Dr. Michael Stein on a sunny April day began a yearlong series of encounters that took her back to the origins of her addiction and unraveled a life driven by compulsion and the constant pursuit of the next pill. The Addict follows Lucy from the start of her treatment, through relapse, to her eventual long-term recovery, including her breakup with a destructive boyfriend whose own drug addiction surpassed hers. It is an unforgettable tale of a young woman living on the edge but determined to take control of her life—and a deeply personal account of a doctor on the front lines of an epidemic.
Synopsis
The Addict opens a window on the very private world of prescription drug addiction, revealing the harrowing and riveting story of a young woman whose life has been taken over by an impulse that she can't control and a need that she can't extinguish.
Lucy's first appointment with Dr. Michael Stein was on a sunny day in April, and the minute she sat down she said, "I'm here for your program," beginning a series of intimate encounters during the course of a year that took her back to the origins of her addiction and unraveled a life driven by compulsion and the constant pursuit of the next pill. The Addict follows Lucy from the start of her treatment, through relapse, to her eventual long-term recovery, including her breakup with a destructive boyfriend whose own addiction to drugs surpassed hers. This is an unforgettable tale of a young woman living on the edge but determined to take control of her life.
Here also is the deeply personal account of a doctor on the front lines of an epidemic. In this masterful work, Michael Stein brings in other patients whose experiences are like Lucy's but in many ways are completely different. Dr. Stein explains what doctors are thinking and feeling about addiction, and how they make difficult decisions with difficult patients. He also aims to change the way we think about addiction, arguing that it should be treated as we treat diabetes or high blood pressure—as a disease within the medical system.
This affecting and thought-provoking book will resonate with anyone struggling with chemical dependence. In The Addict, Dr. Stein creates a portrait of the intimate bond between one patient and one doctor, a relationship that is profoundly moving and incredibly compelling.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
[Stein] loves to listen and analyze. That's what makes The Addict a gripping, illuminating book…Lucy's story alone would not be enough to make The Addict a compelling book. It's the doctor's story that leaps out, and his reluctance to reveal much about himself only serves to make him more intriguing…Dr. Stein has written one other nonfiction book, The Lonely Patient, in which his empathy for the terminally ill and description of what goes on inside his white coat came through. This time, even more hauntingly and successfully, he lets readers make a doctor's experiences their own.
Editorials
Janet Maslin
[Stein] loves to listen and analyze. That's what makes The Addict a gripping, illuminating book…Lucy's story alone would not be enough to make The Addict a compelling book. It's the doctor's story that leaps out, and his reluctance to reveal much about himself only serves to make him more intriguing…Dr. Stein has written one other nonfiction book, The Lonely Patient, in which his empathy for the terminally ill and description of what goes on inside his white coat came through. This time, even more hauntingly and successfully, he lets readers make a doctor's experiences their own.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
With a crisp detachment that belies his vulnerability and caring, Stein (The Lonely Patient) masterfully records the relentless pain-physical and psychological-that brings Lucy Fields, a 29-year-old Vicodin addict, to his door with "a peculiarly common modern American condition." Though the literate and likable Brown University med school prof administers another drug that should block the effects of the Vicodin, he readily admits its success is far from perfect. A daunting addiction unfolds; Fields, college-educated and from an intact family, paradoxically defies yet also encompasses the stereotypical drug-user-she is both self-aware and self-destructive. It's Lucy's arc of illness that keeps this haunting narrative moving forward, but it's Stein's clear-eyed compassion that catapults her story from pathetic to sympathetic. "To enjoy treating addicts... one needed a sense of irony, the belief that everyone's life vacillated between euphoria and sorrow," Stein says. Experts might disagree on treating addiction, but Stein's prescription is hard to dispute: first treat the illness, and then the aching soul sickness that caused it. "To work with addicts is to enter the profession of possibility," he learns. In this uplifting chronicle, Stein celebrates Lucy's victory and his own. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
Stein (The Lonely Patient) here re-creates his heartrending struggle to help patients overcome their addictions to commonly prescribed painkillers and other life-threatening drugs. Charting therapeutic challenges and inevitable recidivism, Stein brings to life his all-too-human patients in a narrative that is as readable as any work of compelling fiction. Therapists, addicts, and their family members will be riveted.
—Lynne Maxwell